In Ugaritic mythology, Lotan was the sea serpent associated with the battle against the storm god Baal.
Lotan appears in texts from Ugarit, a Late Bronze Age city on the Syrian coast. The name is linked with a twisting serpent or dragon and is connected to the chaotic sea. Ugaritic mythology describes Baal’s struggles against forces that threaten divine order, including the sea deity Yam and monstrous servants associated with him.
Lotan is closely related to the Hebrew Bible’s Leviathan through shared Northwest Semitic imagery. Both names evoke a powerful sea monster, but they come from different textual traditions and should not be treated as interchangeable names in every context.
The Ugaritic texts were written in cuneiform and discovered at Ras Shamra in the twentieth century. Their stories provide important evidence for the religious world of the ancient Levant and for later traditions about storm gods battling sea serpents.