ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Ilimilku's poem alerts its audience to kinship's contingency on political interest. The idea of becoming a brother in a political context would have resonated with the poem's ancient Ugaritic audience. Diplomatic documents from the Late Bronze Age bear witness to precisely such a process. The chapter discusses the political phenomenon on the basis of which the Ugaritic poem crafts the portrayal of its hero. Baal's success echoes terrestrial cases in which new polities emerged as brothers in the ancient Near East. The poem's structure can be rendered as follows: Baal struggles with one of El's kinsmen, Baal persuades El to accept him into the kin group, and Baal struggles with another of El's kinsmen. Baal's fortunes may look bright at the end of the poem, but they turn out to lack any grounding beyond his own ability to ensure that they will remain so.
