Danel

Danel (Danʾilu), 'the man of Rapiu, the Harnamite', is the central patriarch of the Ugaritic Tale of Aqhat. After seven days of incubation rites El grants him a son, Aqhat. When the goddess Anat has the boy killed for his bow, Danel curses the land into drought, recovers his son's remains from the gullet of the vulture-mother Samal, and mourns him for seven years. His fame as an exemplar of righteous judgment evidently persisted in the Levant, since Ezekiel names a Danel alongside Noah and Job.

Children

• Pughat

Domains

• justice

Powers

• to judge the cause of the widow and the orphan at the city gate

Epithets

• mt rpiBaruch Margalit, The Ugaritic Poem of AQHT, BZAW 182, 1989 (secondary)
• mt hrnmyN. Wyatt, Religious Texts from Ugarit, 2nd ed., 2002 (secondary)

Relations

• father of: AqhatAqhat is the long-awaited son granted to Danel by El after Baal's intercession. Aqhat himself is entered in the registry under the Canaanite tradition.Simon B. Parker (ed.), Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, 1997 (secondary)
• father of: PughatPughat is Danel's daughter, who avenges her brother Aqhat.N. Wyatt, Religious Texts from Ugarit, 2nd ed., 2002 (secondary)

Sources

• Danel is the righteous patriarch of the Aqhat epic, a childless judge granted a son by El, whose mourning and quest for his murdered son's remains occupy the poem's final tablet; he is widely connected with the Danel named as a paragon of righteousness in Ezekiel 14 and 28.: Simon B. Parker (ed.), Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, SBL Writings from the Ancient World 9, 1997 (secondary); H.-P. Müller, 'Daniel', in K. van der Toorn, B. Becking and P. W. van der Horst (eds.), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed., Brill, 1999 (secondary)