Rapiu
Canaanite · deity · mythic · deity
Rapiu is the singular of a plural the registry already had. The Rephaim are the shades of dead kings in the Ugaritic funerary texts; Rapiu is one of them used as a title, or their king, or the god the word is named for — the material does not distinguish as tidily as one would like. What is striking is the geography: he is the god enthroned at Ashtaroth who rules in Edrei, and Deuteronomy gives those same two cities, in that order, to Og of Bashan, the last of the Rephaim. Two literatures, half a millennium apart, put the same pair of place names in the same formula.
Domains
- underworld
Relations
- counterpart of: The Rephaim
- counterpart of: Milku
Sources
- Reference treatments of Rapiu, of the Rephaim and of the Ashtaroth-and-Edrei formula.