Ugarit

Ras Shamra

Syria · Latakia

Ancient cityUnknown
Approximate period7,500 BCE — 1,190 BCEFrom the Neolithic period onward; especially the Late Bronze Age See on the map ↓

In brief

Excavations at Ras Shamra have uncovered a Late Bronze Age capital that participated in Mediterranean trade. The city's tablets document the local alphabetic script and Ugarit's literature and religious traditions.

What was found?

  • 1Alphabetic tablets and alphabet exercises

    Alongside Ugaritic texts, tablets listing letters in sequence were also found. The widely used system of 30 signs shows that wedge-shaped signs could be combined with alphabetic writing.

  • 2Baal narrative tablets

    Mythological poems recounting the adventures of the storm god Baal were recorded in the local alphabetic script. They are principal sources of early religious literature preserved in a West Semitic language.

  • 3Royal palace

    Courtyards, rooms and stairways leading to upper floors were identified in the extensive palace, which was built in stages. The remains show the monumental architecture of the Late Bronze Age capital.

  • 4Multilingual archive tablets

    Alongside Ugaritic and Akkadian documents, word lists presenting different languages side by side were found. These directly document the multilingual working environment of scribes.

What does it point to?

The archives show that Ugarit was a commercial and administrative center where different languages were used. The discovery of mythological poems alongside administrative documents reveals that writing was used to record both religious beliefs and everyday affairs.

What did it teach us?

  1. Showed that cuneiform could also be used for an alphabetic system.
  2. Alphabet tablets made it possible to compare letter order and different traditions of ordering letters.
  3. Enabled us to learn about the ancient religious narratives of the Levant through texts written in the local language.
  4. Multilingual documents demonstrated that scribes worked with different writing and language traditions.

Images

Ugarit Royal Palace 3914
Dosseman · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Ugarit Corbel
Disdero (talk · contribs) · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Record

Culture
Ugaritic
First modern dig
1929
Team / historical
Valérie Matoïan and Khozama al-Bahloul; Syrian-French Archaeological Mission at Ras Shamra–Ugarit
Coordinates
35.6020°, 35.7820°

Sources

  1. whc.unesco.org
  2. archeologie.culture.gouv.fr
  3. en.wikipedia.org
  4. Fransa Kültür Bakanlığı — Baal anlatısı
  5. Scuola Normale Superiore, Mnamon — Ugarit yazısı

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