A 1984 article by Baruch Levine and Jean-Michel de Tarragon in the JAOS examines a Ugaritic liturgy that commemorates the accession of Ammurapi and includes honors to his dead father Niqmaddu.

The liturgy begins with a summons to the Patrons of Ugarit, including the “Rephaim of the netherworld and their council of Didanites.” Two recently departed kings are also summoned, addressed as “king” not “Rapha,” and the “text continues with a lamentation over the dead king, Niqmaddu. The narrators addresses the throne of the departed king, personified, and commands it to weep. He exhorts the footstool and royal table to shed tears.” The narrator turns to the goddess Shapash, asking that she “locate the departed kings during her nocturnal circuit beneath the earth.” She finds them, and tells the priest or perhaps the king “to descend into the netherworld, ‘below,’ where Niqmaddu and Ammishtamru can be found near the Rephaim. The dead kings and the Rephaim arrive, and sacrifices are offered. Based on what we know of the Rephaim we can assume that they and the former kings join their human hosts in the sacred feast.” The authors believe that the “direct address to the throne, and the references to the footstool and royal table suggest that this liturgy was recited in the royal palace of Ugarit.” Possibly the sacrifice took place at a temple, but sacrifices might also “have been offered in proximity to the royal tombs.”

The authors summarize the assumptions behind the cult of the dead: “The cult of dead ancestors, wherever it is practised, inevitably expresses the belief that the dead have the power to affect the living. Corollary to this is the assumption that the dead will become malevolent toward the living if unhappy with their own afterlife. The cult of the dead has, therefore, two complementary objectives: It aims to afford the dead what they seek, and by so doing assure that the powerful dead will act benevolently toward the living. In the context of the royal funerary cults this meant that if the successors of dead kings and the descendants of dead heroes acted to assure the afterlife of the dead in the nether-world, the dead, in turn, would assure the continuity and security of the royal successors on the throne. In this, our liturgy shares common objectives with the kispum , or sacrifice of the dead, although its overt orientation is somewhat different.”

From this, they attempt to answer a number of problems in Ugaritic studies. One of these is the identity of the Rephaim. Pointing to the fact that the liturgy distinguishes the Rephaim from the kings who have recently died, they conclude: “our text compels us to conclude that the Rephaim are long departed kings (and heroes) who dwell in the netherworld, which is located deep beneath the mountains of that far-away eastern region where the Ugaritians originated. One the other hand, ‘king’ is the term reserved for a dead king of the historic dynasty.” Is there a link between the two? The authors think so: “while awaiting further evidence, it is inescapable that the temporal gap between the last historic kings and the most ancient Rephaim is enough to permit diviniza-tion: Kings and heroes do, ultimately, become Rephaim.”

The liturgy also describes the key “methods” for contacting the chthonic Rephaim: “In the liturgy, those in the netherworld are reached through invocation and sacrifice, and through lamentation; through the acting out of the identification with them.”