Astarte and the Insatiable Sea or pAmherst IX is an Egyptian hieratic retelling of an imported Canaanite story about the Ugaritic goddess Astarte and here rivaling Yam.
Contents
Yam demands tribute from the gods. If his demands are not met, he will overrun the "sky, earth, and mountains." Astarte brings tribute from Ptah, Nut, and Renenutet, but Yam changes the deal: he wants her as his wife, and her divine jewelry that grants lordship over the world.
The conclusion to the Astarte papyrus is inferred from a scrap of a completely different story that mentions Seth, who appears to fight Yam here, being a victor against the sea.
Scholarship
Its interpretation has been a matter of ongoing cultivation over the century, only later coalescing into sense.
History
It went completely unnoticed until the photographic edition of Percy E Newberry in 1899, after first mention in 1871.
Epistemic Bind
The difficulty of study according to Pehal: "On the one hand, we want to identify as precisely as possible these devices “-emically,” i.e., within the frame of reference provided by that culture’s own linguistic or literary practice. On the other hand, to help us achieve this goal, we can rely only on “-etic” hermneutic categories derived from our own theoretical horizon."