The Symbolic Ambiguity of the Mediterranean Sea in Ancient Semitic Mythology
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The god of the Mediterranean Sea in ancient Semitic texts of the Levantine littoral is Yamm, adversary of the Storm god, infamous as the antagonist of the Ugaritic Baal Cycle. Like the sea itself, its god displayed an inherent ambivalence: he was a source of death and life, the provider of bounty and the cause of wreckage, the master of monsters and the protector of domesticated beasts. Depicted in Syrian iconography as a winged deity, Yamm was capable of traversing the distance between his two watery realms. Yamm had a complex relationship with other gods, borne in part from the dichotomies in his character. For all its ambiguity, this symbol for the Mediterranean was immensely important to the coastal kingdoms.