[decimon]

"Yam, from the Canaanite word Yam, (Hebrew ים) meaning "Sea", also written "Yaw", is one name of the Ugaritic god of Rivers and Sea. Also titled Judge Nahar ("Judge River"), he is also one of the 'ilhm (Elohim) or sons of El, the name given to the Levantine pantheon. Others dispute the existence of the alternative names, claiming it is a mistranslation of a damaged tablet. Despite linguistic overlap, theologically this god is not a part of the later subregional monotheistic theology, but rather is part of a broader and archaic Levantine polytheism.

Yam is the deity of the primordial chaos and represents the power of the sea untamed and raging; he is seen as ruling storms and the disasters they wreak. The gods cast out Yam from the heavenly mountain Sappan (modern Jebel Aqra; "Sappan" is cognate to Tsephon. The seven-headed dragon Lotan is associated closely with him and the serpent is frequently used to describe him."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamm

[decimon]

Side dish ping.

[GunRunner]

Cool.

[wildbill]

This is fascinating stuff. If we go forward in time, we can speculate that Popeye the Sailor was modeled after the priests of Yam.

After all, wasn’t his mantra, “I Yam that I Yam.”

[colorado tanker]

The Yavneh-Yam Project at Tel-Aviv U.

http://www.tau.ac.il/~yavneyam/