cover of episode Canaan 5 - The Legend of Kirta

Canaan 5 - The Legend of Kirta

2022/1/12
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Oldest Stories

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The Legend of Kirta, called Keret in some translations, can be a bit hard to understand, especially for a modern audience used to things like the three act structure and protagonists who fit neatly into any sort of moral categories at all. This is the first of our stories from Ugarit, and we are starting with one that we don't even know if it is meant as tragedy or farce. What all these stories hold in common is that they are deeply strange, stranger even than many of the tales from the Hitties or Mesopotamians, and the many missing sections from the text do nothing to edify us. I will be reading them more or less straight, with a bit less commentary than usual, because just putting the story in front of you should be enough to get you pondering. Online at oldeststories.net