Yarikh
Yarikh, or Yaraḫum, was a moon god worshiped in the Ancient Near East. He is best attested in sources from the Amorite city of Ugarit in the north of modern Syria, where he was one of the principal deities. His primary cult center was most likely Larugadu, located further east in the proximity of Ebla. His mythic cult center is Abiluma. He is also attested in other areas inhabited by Amorites, for example in Mari, but also in Mesopotamia as far east as Eshnunna. In the Ugaritic texts, Yarikh appears both in strictly religious context, in rituals and offering lists, and in narrative compositions. He is the main character in The Marriage of Nikkal and Yarikh, a myth possibly based on an earlier Hurrian composition. The eponymous goddess was regarded as his wife in Ugarit, but she is not attested in documents from most other Syrian cities, and most likely only entered the Ugaritic pantheon due to the influence of Hurrian religion.
Ugarit ceased to exist during the Bronze Age collapse, and while Yarikh continued to be worshiped in the Levant and Transjordan, attestations from the first millennium BCE are relatively rare. He played a small role in Phoenician, Punic, Ammonite and Moabite religions, and appears only in a small number of theophoric names from these areas. It is also presumed that he was worshiped by the Israelites and that the cities of Jericho and Beth Yerach were named after him. While the Hebrew Bible contains multiple polemics against the worship of the moon, it is not certain if they necessarily refer to Yarikh.
Name
The name Yarikh is an ordinary Ugaritic word which can refer not only to the lunar god, but also to the moon as a celestial body. A further meaning attested for it is "month." Earlier forms of the name, arakh and erakh, are attested as elements of Amorite theophoric names.The name is grammatically masculine, which is the norm for lunar deities across the Ancient Near East, in contrast with Greece, where the moon corresponded to a female deity, Selene.
Cognates of Yarikh's name are present in many Semitic languages. As a name for the celestial body and the ordinary word "month" they are attested in Hebrew: , Phoenician: , Old Aramaic: . The Akkadian word warḫum, "month" or rarely "moon," is a cognate as well, as are Old South Arabian wrḫ, "month," and the word warḫ, "moon" or "month," present in Ethiopian Semitic languages.
In early Amorite tradition
It is presumed that the moon god was one of the major deities of the early Amorite pantheon. Daniel Schwemer outright states that next to Hadad he was the main deity of the entire area inhabited by the Amorites. He was commonly worshiped as a family deity. His presumed main cult center, attested in the Ugaritic texts, but located further inland in central Syria, presumably in the proximity of Ebla, was Larugadu, identified with Arugadu from the earlier Eblaite sources. No references to this location from outside the Ugarit and Ebla corpora of texts are known. Since Yarikh himself is not attested in the sources from the latter city, it is presumed that he was only introduced to northern Syria by the Amorites. The Eblaites instead referred to their moon god as Suinu, similar as their contemporaries in Kish, and in addition to phonetic writing Zu-i-nu adopted the Mesopotamian convention of using dEN.ZU to represent the name of the moon deity in cuneiform. While Suinu's name is a cognate of Akkadian Sin, it is presumed that his cult developed locally and was not introduced from Mesopotamia. His cult center was apparently NI-ra-arki, a city located close to Ebla. A second possible lunar deity worshiped in Ebla was Šanugaru. Due to Yarikh's association with Larugardu, it has additionally been argued that the god Hadabal, who was worshiped there in the third millennium BCE, had lunar character, but this conclusion is not universally accepted. Alfonso Archi assumes that the diffusion of Hadabal's cult, whose territorial extent is well documented in Eblaite texts, does not appear to match his presumed astral character.Yarikh is well attested in Amorite theophoric names. In Old Babylonian Mari, he appears in thirty nine individual types of names. Examples include Abdu-Erakh, "servant of Yarikh," Uri-Erakh, "light of Yarikh," Yantin-Erakh, "Yarikh has given" and Zimri-Erakh, "protection of Yarikh." Individuals bearing them came from various areas in the kingdom and near it, including the city of Mari itself, Terqa, Saggartum, the Khabur Triangle, the area around the Balikh, Suhum and Zalmaqum. A certain Yantin-Erakh served as a troop commander under Zimri-Lim. Similar theophoric names are also known from Eshnunna. A document excavated there indicates that at one point in the Old Babylonian period a certain Abdi-Erakh was a king of an unspecified city in Mesopotamia. After its initial discovery, Thorkild Jacobsen proposed that he ruled Eshnunna itself, but this view has since been disproved. Another Abdi-Erakh, a contemporary of Ipiq-Adad of Eshnunna, apparently ruled over Ilip and Kish.
It is sometimes argued that in Mesopotamia Erakh/Yarikh and Sin might have been understood as, respectively, Amorite and Akkadian names of the same deity, rather than two separate moon gods. However, Ichiro Nakata lists them separately from each other in his overview of deities attested in Mari, unlike the various variants of the names of the weather or solar gods. The deity Sin-Amurrum, attested in the incantation series Maqlû according to Karel van der Toorn might be the Mesopotamian name of the Amorite moon god.
In Ugarit
Yarikh was regarded as one of the primary deities of the Ugaritic pantheon. His role as a lunar deity was qualified by the epithet nyr šmm, "luminary of the heavens" or "lamp of the heavens," which has been compared to a similar Akkadian title of the Mesopotamian moon god Sin, munawwir šamê u ersetim, "illuminator of the heavens and earth." He could also be referred to as a "prince", which is also attested in the case of multiple other deities, including the weather god Baal and the underworld god Resheph, and is meant to signify high status. Furthermore, a single passage refers to him as "the most pleasant of the gods", which was apparently meant to highlight his physical attractiveness. According to Dennis Pardee, it is possible he was believed to spend the day in the underworld. It has also been suggested that he could function as its gatekeeper, a role which is otherwise well attested for the god Resheph. These two gods are paired in an incantation against snakebite.In the standard Ugaritic deity lists, Yarikh follows the Kotharat and precedes Mount Saphon. In another similar text, he follows the sea god Yam and Baal, whose names are written in a single line, and precedes the craftsman god Kothar. He is also attested in ritual texts. During celebrations which took place during the full moon in an unknown month, two bulls had to be sacrificed for him. Subsequently in an offering list included in the same prescriptive text it is stated he also receives a ram after Baal of Ugarit and Baal of Aleppo, and before a ram and a bull were offered to Anat of Saphon. Another offering list places him between the Kotharat and Attar as a recipient of a ram. He could also receive offerings alongside Nikkal. Additionally, the terms Gaṯarāma and Gatarūma, designations of a group of god which are etymologically, respectively, dual and plural forms of the name Gaṯaru, might in some cases refer to Yarikh, grouped with Gaṯaru, the sun goddess Shapash or both of these deities.
Thirty individuals bearing theophoric names invoking Yarikh have been identified with certainty in the Ugaritic texts. A particularly commonly occurring name, Abdi-Yarikh, written as ‘bdyrḫ in the Ugaritic alphabetic script meant "servant of Yarikh." Additionally, a single name known from a text written in the standard cuneiform script uses the logogram d30 as the theophoric element, but it is not certain if it refers to Yarikh or another lunar deity. Kušuḫ is also attested in Ugaritic names, appearing in a total of six, one of them belonging to a person from outside the city, while the Mesopotamian Sin - in a single one, belonging to a Babylonian rather than a local resident. While the total number of the names invoking Yarikh and adjacent deities is smaller than that of these invoking Baal, Resheph or Shapash, he is nonetheless better attested in this capacity than multiple deities who appear frequently in myths, such as Athirat, Attar, Yam or Ashtart.
In addition to his presence in theophoric names, the Hurrian moon god Kušuḫ is also well attested in other documents from Ugarit. It has been argued that he was identified with Yarikh due to his analogous role. However, in one ritual text, KTU3 1.111, Kušuḫ and Yarikh, accompanied by Nikkal, who is placed between them, receive offerings together as separate deities. Since accompanying instructions are a combination of Ugaritic and Hurrian, it is possible that the scribe responsible for the preparation of the tablet was bilingual. Both this text and other sources from Ugarit indicate that Ugaritic and Hurrian deities could be worshiped side by side. Further lunar deities known from Ugarit include Saggar, a god presumed to be analogous to Eblaite Šanugaru, who was worshiped in association with Išḫara, hll, the father of the Kotharat, whose name might be a cognate of the Arabic word hilālun, which lead to the proposal that he was the god of the lunar crescent, and Kas’a, only attested in association of Yarikh and based on presumed cognates in other Semitic languages, for example Habrew, presumed to represent a presently unidentified lunar phase. Dennis Pardee additionally suggests that yrḫ kṯy, a hypostasis of Yarikh, might be a lunar deity of Kassite origin. The presence of the "Kassite Yarikh" in Ugaritic texts is also accepted by Mark Smith. He is attested in a prayer for well-being and in an offering list.
Yarikh appears in a number of Ugaritic myths, but his role in them does not necessarily reflect his nature as a lunar deity.