Resheph

Resheph (also Rešef, Reshef; Canaanite ršp ; Eblaite Rašap, Egyptian ršpw) was a deity associated with plague (or a personification of plague) in ancient Canaanite religion. The originally Eblaite and Canaanite deity was adopted into ancient Egyptian religion in the late Bronze Age during the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt (late 15th century BC) as a god of horses and chariots.

In Biblical Hebrew, רֶשֶׁף‎ resheph is a noun interpreted as "flame, lightning" but also "burning fever, plague, pestilence".

The name is found in the third millennium tablets from Ebla, as Rašap (Ra-ša-ap), listed as divinity of the cities of Atanni, Gunu, Tunip, and Shechem. Rasap was also one of the chief gods of the city of Ebla having one of the four city gates named in his honor.

References to rsp gn have been found at Ebla and Ugarit. These have been variously interpreted as associating Resheph with the shield and protection, or the city Gunu, or gardens, or the cemetery.

Ršp was an important Ugaritic deity. He had the byname of tġr špš "door-warden of the Sun". Sacrifices to Ršp (ršp gn) were performed in gardens.

Ugaritic Ršp was equated with Mesopotamian Nergal. Fauth (1974) argued that ršp in the later Canaanite period no longer referred to a specific god and could be used as a byname, as in Rešep-Mikal at Kition. Teixidor (1976) based on an epithet ḥṣ in Kition (interpreted as "arrow") identifies Ršp as a plague god who strikes his victims with arrows as Homeric Apollo (Iliad I.42–55), and argues for an interpretatio graeca of Ršp with Apollo in Idalium.

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