El

deity sky Canaanite single tradition · 28

El is the Canaanite high god who lived on a mountain to the north. The lesser god Helel tried to dethrone him.

↻ synthesized from 28 sources

When

First attested
3000 BCE
Attested period
-3000 – 2020
Historical notes
Canaanite religion flourished from the Bronze Age through the early Roman period.

Relationships

syncretized with
Cronus, Poseidon, Kumarbi, Enlil, Yahweh, Ra
enemy of
Horon, Ba‘al
consort of
Asherah, Athirat
allied with
Horon, Yahweh, Ilib
manifested by
ʾIlu
sibling of
Baitylos
creator of
Baʿal Hadad, Shatiqatu
served by
Kothar-wa-Khasis

Expand to full subgraph →

Sources

Source passages

“The original myth may have been about the lesser god Helel trying to dethrone the Canaanite high god El, who lived on a mountain to the north.”

#2272 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001

“El, creator bull deity in Canaanite mythology”

#5781 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001

“Others have argued that from the Patriarchal age, these different names were generally understood to refer to the same single great god, El. This is the position of Frank Moore Cross. What is certain is that the form El does appear in Israelite names from every period, including the name Yisrā'ēl”

#11670 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001

“He was considered a son of the king of the gods, El.”

#14502 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

“sun of El (head of the local pantheon).”

#15452 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001