Liikanen, Caro2025-09-112025-09-112025-09-11http://hdl.handle.net/10138/601116This thesis examines the concept of the marzēaḥ in Ugarit, a Late Bronze Age city-state on the coast of Syria. The primary goal is to define and characterize the phenomenon in Ugarit based on primary sources from Ugarit. This thesis additionally investigates two specific common claims from scholarship: that the marzēaḥ was religious, cultic, or ritual, and that the marzēaḥ excluded women. Nine primary sources are used, four in Akkadian and five in Ugaritic. This includes five legal texts, two economic texts, and two myths. The method of close reading is used to analyze the primary sources, and the information from them is synthesized. This synthesis shows the marzēaḥ to have been an institution of associations situated within the social and economic elite. The members of these associations were called “men of the marzēaḥ”, who could act as a collective legal entity in legal and economic contexts. Building on this synthesis, a variety of sociological theories are applied to the material to investigate the claims that it was religious, cultic, or ritual, and that it excluded women. The findings show that claiming the marzēaḥ to have been cultic goes beyond the evidence, and trying to label it religious is an anachronistic imposition. However, calling the phenomenon ritualized and stating that it involved rituals can be justified. The idea of male exclusivity in the marzēaḥ is brought into question, and it is demonstrated that the evidence does not prove either women’s inclusion or their exclusion.engIn Copyright 1.0rituaalitnaisethistoriamyytitUgaritassyriologiaakkadiugaritmyöhäispronssikausiURN:NBN:fi:hulib-202509113949pro gradu -tutkielmaMuinaisen Lähi-idän kieletAncient Near Eastern languagesSpråk i forna MellanösternKielten maisteriohjelmaMaster's Programme in LanguagesMagisterprogrammet i språk