Ugarit

Important site of an ancient Syrian city, north of Latakia on the Syrian coast, occupied from an aceramic Early Neolithic (7th millennium BC) through the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It was destroyed c 1200 BC; its fall coincided with the invasion of the Northern and Sea Peoples and earthquakes and famines. In its last three centuries it was in commercial contact with Egypt, the Hittites, and the Mycenaeans. Temples to Baal and Dagon (2nd millennium BC) and an elaborate palace with archives of cuneiform clay tablets have been excavated. These commercial and administrative documents and religious texts are very important records of the Canaanites. The texts are written either in the Babylonian cuneiform script or in the special alphabetic cuneiform script invented in Ugarit, dating to the 15th-14th centuries BC when it came first under strong Egyptian influence and then under Hittite dominance. Ugarit may be credited with the development of the first true alphabet: simplified cuneiform signs were used for an alphabet of 30 letters. Bronzes, ivories, stelae, high priest's library, and built tombs also survive.

2nd-millennium bc Canaanite city at modern Ras Shamra near the Mediterranean coast of Syria. Although securely identified as ancient Ugarit only in the 2nd millennium, the site was occupied from much earlier and the city overlies a series of earlier Bronze Age, Chalcolithic and Neolithic settlements going back to the 7th millennium bc. The city flourished throughout the 2nd millennium, but its heyday was in the 15th to 12th centuries, when it came first under strong 525 Egyptian influence and then under Hittite dominance. At this stage the town walls enclosed c20 hectares. Commodious family houses have been excavated and a number of important public buildings, including two temples (one dedicated to Baal, the other to Dagon), a priest’s library yielding many sacred texts, and a palace with a very large archive of administrative and economic documents. From these we know that Ugarit was a major commercial settlement at this time and must have housed a decidely cosmopolitan community. Not only were there tablets in Akkadian cuneiform — the lingua franca of trade throughout the Near East — but others, also using the cuneiform script, were in the local language, Ugaritic, and a few others were in Hurrian (see Hurri); some seal impressions are in Hittite hieroglyphics. Moreover, the population of Ugarit may be credited with the development of the first true alphabet simplified cuneiform signs were used for an alphabet of 32 letters, probably in the 15th century bc. The city was destroyed in the early 12th century bc, perhaps by the Peoples of the Sea.