Ba'al

System Lord Ba'al

Earth Culture of Origin

Semites, Canaanites

Alternate names / Spellings

Belus, Hadad or Adad, Melqart,Bael, Baël (French), Baell, Bēl. Also Baalzebub, Beelzebub. At times, Ba'al has been used interchangeably with El. See also Belus.

Presides Over

Fertility, agriculture

Personal Symbols

The sun

Earth Mythological References

In ancient times, many gods bore the title Ba'al. The inhabitants of territories each adopted for themselves their own version of Ba'al as a diety, protector and benefactor. Ba'al means “master” or “owner”, but more commonly "lord".

Ba'al was the son of El, the high god of the Caananites. His annual death and consequent rebirth celebrations included human sacrifice and temple prostitution. Ba'al’s providence extended over the protection of livestock and crops to such a degree that when droughts and other natural disasters occurred, his worshippers would engage in frenzied obeisance to gain his favor.

Ba'al has been associated with the dark god Moloch. Savage worship rites included self-mutilation, dancing, chanting and the burning of offerings which included first-born children.

Also adopted by the Phoenicians, the cult of Ba'al spread far and wide due to their extensive travels by sea and included the Moabites, the Midianites and the Israelites. Eventually, the name Ba'al was abandoned in Judaism.

In Christian writings, Ba'al is thought of as a demon. This was before the discovery of ancient texts, explaining the Syrian pantheon. Ba'al Zebûb (or Baalzebub/Beelzebub), "lord of the flies" in Hebrew, was frequently confused with some Semitic spirits and deities called ba'al, which in some early Christian texts, may refer to a high-ranking demon or Satan himself.

Ba'al’s chief consort was Ashtoreth or Ashtart, who may have been the equivalent to the Greek goddess, Aphrodite.

Stargate References

Season Five

Ba'al leads summit of the Goa'uld System Lords

YU:
Do not accept gifts from Ba'al.

DANIEL:
They have a habit of exploding, especially when he feels he has been slighted. He wiped out the inhabitants of two star systems, sixty million lives, rather than lose them to Sokar in a territorial dispute.

At a summit of the System Lords, Ba'al was introduced as one of the seven remaining Goa’uld chiefs in the wake of the death of Apophis. This meeting of rival Goa'uld was an historical event requiring a great deal of special security measures to ensure their safety and secrecy. The Tok’ra sent Daniel Jackson, posing as the lo'taur or most trusted personal servant of Lord Yu, in among the System Lords as an assassin to take them all out at once with a special poison created by Tok’ra scientists which would act only on the symbiotes.

However, upon discovering that another, unknown Goa’uld was launching successful attacks against the System Lords, Daniel chose to let them live and remain squabbling among themselves rather than destroy them and leave the universe under the control of the heretofore unknown Goa’uld, Anubis. Ba'al was among those who voted to allow Anubis to return to the inner circle of the System Lords, in exchange for the destruction of the Tau'ri at Anubis’s hands. He is the only one among them not bound by the Asgard Protected Planets Treaty. (5.15 "Summit Part 1" and 5.16 "Last Stand Part 2")

Season Six

Ba'al tortures O'Neill for Tok'ra information

Some months later, the Tok’ra sent one of their own, a symbiote named Kanan, into Ba'al’s ranks to spy on him. Kanan used Ba'al’s lo'taur (most trusted personal servant), a young woman, to get into the Goa’uld’s personal quarters to gather information. Kanan then left her behind when his mission was completed. After the death of his host, the Tok’ra symbiote was implanted into Col. O’Neill, who was dying of an unknown disease contracted in Antarctica after the discovery of an Ancient woman frozen in the ice (6.04 "Frozen").

Kanan healed O’Neill of his illness but then took the colonel back to Ba'al’s secret base to rescue Ba'al's lo'taur Shallan, whom Kanan had loved, used, and left behind. Though the Tok'ra accepted sacrifice and loss as an inevitable consequence of war, Carter and Jonas Quinn believed Kanan was influenced by O'Neill's code of honour, particularly his commitment to not leaving his people behind.

The escape was foiled and O’Neill was killed, later to be revived in Ba'al’s sarcophagus. The System Lord repeatedly tortured Jack to death and resurrected him in an attempt to retrieve information imprinted on O'Neill's mind from the symbiote, which fled the colonel’s body during the escape attempt. Ba'al had developed anti-gravity technology on the secret base where Jack was held captive and Kanan had passed this information along to Tok’ra operatives.

Jack was saved when the location of the secret base was revealed to Ba'al's rival Lord Yu by Teal'c, inspired during kel'no'reem by the ascended Daniel. Yu, greedy for the new technology, promptly attacked the base with the motherships necessary to breach its defences. During that attack, Jack managed to escape successfully with Ba'al’s lo'taur. (6.06 "Abyss")

Season Seven

Ba'al is enlisted by Teal'c and Oshu to lead the combined forces of the System Lords against Anubis

Lord Yu, who had voted against the inclusion of Anubis among the ranks of the System Lords, led the combined fleet of the Systems Lords in the battle against his rise to supremacy over them all. When Yu, the oldest of the Goa'uld symbiotes, began to exhibit signs of paranoia and senility, Teal'c and Yu's First Prime Oshu turned to Ba'al, finessing him into taking Yu's place.

Ba'al led the attack on Anubis as his mothership hovered over the Kelownan capital, home of Jonas Quinn. After destroying Anubis's vast mothership, Ba'al demanded Anubis's surrender, only to find he'd already fled. Although his actions saved Jonas's people from extermination, Ba'al was made aware of the existence of Kelowna and its valuable naquadriah. He also used his command of the combined fleet of the System Lords into an aggressive and successful assault on his fellow, expanding his empire further and faster than anyone could have predicted. (7.01 "Fallen Part 1" and 7.02 "Homecoming Part 2")

The SGC successfully made him the single biggest Goa'uld threat after Anubis.

Ba'al's influence was felt again when in a trance, Daniel Jackson remembered that Master Bra'tac and Teal'c's son Rya'c were imprisoned in one of Ba'al's brutal deathcamps. Captured rebel Jaffa were literally worked to death in the construction of ha'tak vessels - Goa'uld motherships. Only Jaffa could stand the intense heat and toxic gases of the blast furnaces fed by underground volcanic systems. Eventually even they succumbed. It was a logical place for Bra'tac and Rya'c to recruit rebels.

When Daniel was able to recall the planet's location and Carter used his memories to unlock the forcefield over Ba'al's Stargate there, SG-1 went through to Erebus to rescue their captured friends. Carter and Daniel successfully destroyed the mothership Ba'al's forces were constructing while O'Neill, Teal'c and the others freed the Jaffa and destroyed his labour camp. (7.03 "Orpheus")

Even after getting his new mothership destroyed on Erebus, Ba'al was not to be put down for long. He took every opportunity he could to strengthen his forces. When the SGC tested out a new DHD "computer" virus called "Avenger 2.0" to lock out the Stargate on one of Ba'al's planets, Ba'al took the opportunity to attack other System Lords by modifying the virus to shut down Stargates on all the planets that he knew. By paralyzing the Stargates, he was able to attack with his ships and increase his domain. Carter and the virus' designer, Dr. Jay Felger, had to 'gate to Ba'al's planet and modify the virus to return the Stargate network back to its full operational capability and prevent further tampering. (7.09 "Avenger 2.0")

Season Eight

Ba'al escapes capture after the defeat of his fleet over Dakara

After Anubis's fleet was destroyed by Jack's use of the weapon in the Antarctic Outpost (7.22 "Lost City Part 2"), the System Lords decided to divide Anubis's domain equally among themselves. Ba'al, however, had other ideas and took more than his share, including the Kull Warriors which he reprogrammed to be loyal to himself. The other System Lords sent three of their own to Earth in order to strike up a deal to get rid of Ba'al and return the balance of power to the remaining System Lords. The "negotiations" at the SGC did not go in the System Lords' favor, so they decided to send a mothership to Earth to "see a demonstration" of the Antarctic defense system, but Ba'al destroyed the ship before it reached Earth. The System Lords went away from the SGC hoping for a chance to fight—all except Camulus, the Celtic god of war, who asked for asylum because he had no more army with which to fight (8.01 "New Order Part 1").

Ba'al was checking out all of Anubis's former bases and spotted SG-1 on P2X-887. He saw that SG-1 was stuck in the stronghold and decided to take advantage of the situation by claiming that he held them captive in order to trade them for Camulus. Jack asked Camulus for something to prove his "loyalty" to the SGC, so Camulus led them to a Zero Point Module (ZPM) which matched that used in the Antarctic Outpost to power the chair that Jack used to activate the weapons which destroyed Anubis's fleet. Camulus, however, had the ZPM booby-trapped to explode as soon as an electrical current was placed through it. The SGC discovered this quite by accident, but decided to use it in their trading of Camulus for SG-1. Jack convinced Camulus to use the ZPM against Ba'al. When the trade-off was attempted, Ba'al took Camulus, but didn't return SG-1, since SG-1 had never been in his custody from the start. SG-1 was able to contact the SGC after freeing themselves and they returned home safely. Jack, never trusting a Goa'uld, had sent Camulus to Ba'al with a dud ZPM and Ba'al, if he discovered Camulus' intent to kill him, most probably killed Camulus, but we are not made certain of this. (8.04 "Zero Hour")

After a year of planning, the Jaffa Priestess Ishta had coordinated the overthrow of her lord Moloc. She had been rescuing female Jaffa babies from Moloc's sacrificial fires for several years (7.10 "Birthright") and finally had gathered enough support among the Rebel Jaffa within Moloc's ranks to see an end to his reign of terror. Teal'c tried to convince her that they should wait to overthrow Moloc because another System Lord could take his place and they would be no better off, but Ishta was determined to assassinate Moloc because of all the deaths he had caused. With the help of Teal'c and the SGC, Moloc was killed, and Ba'al, as Teal'c had predicted, took the opportunity to absorb Moloc's domain into his own, making him stronger than before. (8.09 "Sacrifices")

A group of ex-NID agents had formed into an organization called The Trust. They decided that it was best to take an offensive position in protecting Earth from the Goa'uld threat, so they put into action a program of systematically killing off all of the Goa'uld and Jaffa on the planets known to be in Ba'al's territory. They selected Ba'al's domain first probably because Ba'al was considered the strongest of the System Lords. Millions of Jaffa were killed in this assault before the SGC discovered the plan and attempted to stop it. They confiscated all of the poison which The Trust stored in a warehouse on Earth, but were not able to stop The Trust in escaping with Osiris' Al'kesh with enough poison to wipe out at least six more planets. (8.10 "Endgame")

Members of The Trust were successful in using the poison on two more planets before they were captured by a Goa'uld, implanted with symbiotes, and sent back to Earth to infiltrate The Trust by implanting symbiotes in the remaining members. These members were the wealthy businessmen who financed The Trust's activities, as well as political and military leaders from around the world. They came very close in starting a nuclear war in order to gain access to the Antarctic Outpost. It was thought that Ba'al would have been too busy to distract himself with Earth, but it is not beyond possibility that he was involved in this plan. It is also possible that it was Anubis. (8.14 "Full Alert")

Ba'al continued to build power, either defeating or forcing other System Lords to capitulate (8.12 "Prometheus Unbound", 8.13 "It's Good To Be King"). His territory was becoming larger and larger and soon, the High Council of the System Lords was reduced to three members, led by Lord Yu. They assembled at the space station in the Hasara System to plan their moves against Ba'al, but Ba'al knew that they didn't have the power to overcome him. He sent one of his lieutenants to present the conditions of their surrender. Ba'al promised that if they surrendered, he would allow them to keep their armies and continue to administer their territories under his authority. They would be permitted to live, so long as they bowed before him as Supreme Commander of the entire Goa'uld domain. Lord Yu and the two other System Lords (unidentified) insisted that they had not lost their resolve, but they were all unexpectingly killed by the Replicators who came to the Milky Way Galaxy to consume the Goa'uld's technology. The only Goa'uld left in power were Ba'al and the seemingly-impossible-to-kill half-ascended Anubis. (8.16 "Reckoning Part 1")

Ba'al worked for Anubis, biding his time to discover how to kill him. As his lieutenant, Ba'al's fleets were joined with Anubis's in battle with the Replicators. The Replicators, however, were relentless and were quickly overpowering the motherships. Ba'al was losing his fleet quickly and decided to enlist the help of the Tau'ri in ridding the galaxy of the Replicators. He knew that the Tau'ri had helped the Asgard in the past with the Replicators and hoped that they would tell the Goa'uld how to destroy them. His argument to Jack was that there would be countless human life lost if they did not help. (8.16 "Reckoning Part 1", 8.17 "Reckoning Part 2")

Ba'al told Jack that Anubis had his eye on using an Ancient weapon on the planet named Dakara. This planet was deep in Ba'al's territory and was usually heavily guarded, but because of the Replicator threat, Ba'al had sent most of the ha'tak assigned to the planet into battle. This left the planet less protected and the Rebel Jaffa took advantage of this. They easily took control of the temple on Dakara and made their stand there. Anubis instructed Ba'al to leave the battle with the Replicators and go to Dakara to wipe out all of the Rebel Jaffa, hoping that this would put an end to their rebellion once and for all. Ba'al did as he was asked, but stalled his arrival to Dakara to buy time for the Tau'ri to find and destroy the weapon. (8.16 "Reckoning Part 1", 8.17 "Reckoning Part 2")

Once Ba'al's fleet arrived at Dakara, he delayed the battle with the Rebel Jaffa as much as he could, sending his command ha'tak after the Rebel Jaffa's ha'tak instead of invading the planet. Finally, Carter and Jacob Carter/Selmak discovered the Ancient weapon and that it could be used to destroy the Replicators without harming living things in the galaxy. They enlisted Ba'al's help in reprogramming the DHD and Stargate on Dakara to simultaneously dial all of the Stargates in the galaxy so that the weapon's energy wave would hit all of the Replicators in the galaxy at one time, denying them time to adjust to the frequency. Ba'al appeared to Carter and Jacob/Selmak as a hologram and gave Carter the instructions on rigging the Stargate. He then helped them calibrate the weapon until he could no longer maintain his transmission after his ship came under attack by the Replicators. The Carters got the weapon calibrated and activated it, successfully destroying all of the Replicators in the galaxy (these were presumed to be the last of the Replicators anywhere in the known universe). (8.17 "Reckoning Part 2")

Rebel Jaffa managed to board Ba'al's ha'tak after the Replicators were destroyed. With several weapons pointed at him, Ba'al laughed in their faces and transported himself off of the ship. Because of his escape, the Rebel Jaffa easily took the remaining ships of his fleet and the planet Dakara. (8.17 "Reckoning Part 2")

But, Ba'al wasn't finished. He made his way back to Anubis's command base. To his dismay, however, Anubis announced his intention of destroying all life in the galaxy, including Ba'al himself for betraying him, and re-creating it in his own grand design. Anubis left Ba'al standing in his throne room, alone and dejected. Although Anubis was prevented from killing all life with the weapon on Dakara by Oma Desala, and all of Anubis's Kull Warriors were destroyed by the Rebel Jaffa, it was not known what became of Ba'al. (8.18 "Threads")

Season Nine

Ba'al's clone is executed by Free Jaffa on Dakara

Reports started to come in to the Free Jaffa on Ba'al's whereabouts, and the Free Jaffa's new leader, Gerak, wanted to find him. It would be a great demonstration of his power if Gerak could capture and execute the false god in front of his fellow Jaffa. Ba'al knew that he'd be sought after and he engineered a cunning plan: he'd hide in plain sight on Earth as a public figure, a businessman of enormous wealth and clout due to the infiltration of The Trust by the Goa'uld (8.14 "Full Alert"). Thinking that no one would come after him if he threatened the use of a bomb, Ba'al conducted his business, building a conglomerate of companies which specialized in government defense contracts and technology. The search for Ba'al put a strain on the relationship between the Tau'ri and the Free Jaffa as Gerak sent his followers to Earth in secret. Converging on Ba'al's headquarters, the Free Jaffa extracted him first and executed him on Dakara, with Teal'c as a witness. However, the SGC discovered that Ba'al had a cloning laboratory and that most likely, the Ba'al who was executed on Dakara was not the "original" at all. Ba'al had at least four clones on Earth, while he had also been reported having been somewhere else in the galaxy. (9.07 "Ex Deus Machina")

With an unknown number of clones sporting around the galaxy, it was hard to tell what Ba'al himself was doing. His clones are every bit like him, including the glowing eyes of a Goa'uld. One such supposed clone started an operation where he would capture and brainwash members of the Free Jaffa Nation's High Council. Each newly brainwashed member would help him recruit the next. It is unknown who the first victim was, but those who were affected included Ka'lel, U'kin, and Maz'rai. U'kin coordinated the capture of Teal'c. Unknown to Ba'al, Teal'c had already undergone the same brainwashing techniques by Apophis (5.01 "Enemies"), and had successfully overcome the false memories through the Rite of M'al Sharran (5.02 "Threashold"). Maz'rai performed the Rite alone and died, but not before revealing the one who had recruited him. With this information, Bra'tac and the SGC located Ba'al's brainwashing base. While Ba'al attempted to reason with Teal'c, Teal'c learned that Ba'al intended to rule the Free Jaffa Nation through the High Council, claiming that under his leadership, they could overcome the Ori. Ba'al's plans were thwarted when Teal'c killed the clone during Teal'c's rescue. (9.14 "Stronghold")

Ba'al's cleverly-placed clones continued to pop up throughout the galaxy. One such group was active in using Asgard beaming technology from a ha'tak to steal the Stargates and DHDs from various planets. Ba'al's intention was to build his own private network of Stargates on planets which didn't have them, out of reach of the Priors of the Ori and others. Ba'al's ha'tak was tracked down with a tag placed on an unsuspecting Nerus (one of Ba'al's Goa'uld scientists), and SG-1 successfully used locator beacons to have all of the stolen 'gates, except for one, beamed onto the new Daedalus-class Odyssey. The one Stargate which didn't get tagged was used by SG-1 to escape Ba'al's ha'tak which exploded soon after their escape in a battle with Lucian Alliance ships. Presumably, all of Ba'al's clones on this ship were killed. (9.16 "Off The Grid")

Episodes

• 5.15 "Summit Part 1"
• 5.16 "Last Stand Part 2"
• 6.04 "Frozen"
• 6.06 "Abyss"
• 7.02 "Homecoming Part 2"
• 7.04 "Orpheus"
• 7.09 "Avenger 2.0"
• 7.10 "Birthright"
• 7.22 "Lost City Part 2"
• 8.01 "New Order Part 1"
• 8.04 "Zero Hour"
• 8.09 "Sacrifices"
• 8.10 "Endgame"
• 8.12 "Prometheus Unbound"
• 8.13 "It's Good To Be King"
• 8.14 "Full Alert"
• 8.16 "Reckoning Part 1"
• 8.17 "Reckoning Part 2"
• 8.18 "Threads"
• 9.07 "Ex Deus Machina"
• 9.14 "Stronghold"
• 9.16 "Off The Grid"

Related Characters

• Colonel Jack O'Neill
• Dr. Daniel Jackson
• Maj. Samantha Carter
• Teal'c
• Anubis
• Apophis
• Bra'tac
• Camulus
• Jacob Carter/Selmak
• Dr. Jay Felger
• Gerak
• Ishta
• Ka'lel
• Kanan
• Maz'rai
• Moloc
• Nerus
• Oma Desala
• Oshu
• Osiris
• Rya'c
• Shallan
• Sokar
• U'kin
• Yu

Related Articles

Keywords

• Al'kesh
• Ancients
• Antarctic Outpost
• Anti-Gravity
• Avenger
• Belus
• Cloning
• Dakara
• Dial Home Device (DHD)
• Erebus
• Free Jaffa Nation
• Goa'uld
• Hasara System
• Ha'tak
• Holographic Technology
• Kelowna
• Kull Warrior
• Lo'taur
• Lucian Alliance
• M'al Sharran
• Odyssey
• P2X-887
• Rebel Jaffa
• Replicators
• Sarcophagus
• Stargate
• Symbiote
• System Lord
• Tau'ri
• The Trust
• Tretonin
• Weapon on Dakara
• Zero Point Module (ZPM)

Other

• 5.01 "Enemies Part 2"
• 5.02 "Threshold"

Further Reading

• Encyclopedia Mythica: Baal by Alag G. Hefner
• [1]

Actor

• Cliff Simon

---

--DeeKayP 10:17, 17 Jun 2004 (PDT) --Updated --Mel 19:54, 28 June 2006 (PDT)