Ugarit: Encyclopedia - Ugarit

Ugarit

Ugarit (modern site Ras Shamra رأس شمرة; in Arabic) 35°35´ N; 35°45´E) was an ancient cosmopolitan port city, sited on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria a few kilometers north of the modern city of Latakia. Ugarit sent tribute to Egypt and maintained trade and diplomatic connections with Cyprus (called Alashiya), documented in the archives recovered from the site and corroborated by Mycenaean and Cypriot pottery found there. The polity was at its height from ca. 1450 BC until 1200 BC.

Ugarit - The site

Ugarit's location was forgotten until 1928 when an Alawite peasant accidentally opened an old tomb while plowing a field. The discovered area was the Necropolis of Ugarit. Excavations have since revealed an important city that takes its place alongside Ur and Eridu as a cradle of urban culture, with a prehistory reaching back to c. 6000 BC, perhaps because it was both a port, and at the entrance of the inland trade route to the Euphrates and Tigris lands.

Most excavations of Ugarit were undertaken under extreme political conditions by archaeologist Claude Schaeffer from the Prehistoric and Gallo-Roman Museum of Strasbourg.

The excavations uncovered a royal palace of 90 rooms laid out around eight enclosed courtyards, many ambitious private dwellings, including two private libraries (one belonging to a diplomat named Rapanu) that contained diplomatic, legal, economic, administrative, scholastic, literary and religious texts. Crowning the hill where the city was built were two main temples: one to Baal the "king", son of El, and one to Dagon, the chthonic god of fertility and wheat.

On excavation of the site, several deposits of cuneiform clay tablets were found, constituting a palace library, a temple library and -- apparently unique in the world at the time -- two private libraries; all dating from the last phase of Ugarit, around 1200 BC. The tablets found at this cosmopolitan center are written in four languages: Sumerian, Akkadian (the language of diplomacy in the ancient Near East), Hurrian and Ugaritic -- of which nothing was known when the discoveries were made. No less than seven different scripts were in use at Ugarit: Egyptian and Luwian hieroglyphics, and Cypro-Minoan, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian, and Ugaritic cuneiform.

During excavations in 1958, yet another library of tablets was uncovered. These were, however, sold on the black market and not immediately recovered. The "Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets" are now housed at the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, California. They were edited by Loren R. Fisher in 1971. In 1973, an archive containing around 120 tablets was discovered during rescue excavations; in 1994 more than 300 further tablets were discovered on this site in a large ashlar building, covering the final years of the Bronze Age city's existence.

The most important piece of literature recovered from Ugarit is arguably the Baal cycle, describing the basis for the religion and cult of the Canaanite Baal.

Ugarit - History

Though the site is thought to have been inhabited earlier, Neolithic Ugarit was already important enough to be fortified with a wall early on, perhaps by 6000 BC.

The first written evidence mentioning the city comes from the nearby city of Ebla, c. 1800 BC. Ugarit passed into the sphere of influence of Egypt, which deeply influenced its art. The earliest Ugaritic contact with Egypt (and the first exact dating of Ugaritic civilization) comes from a carnelian bead identified with the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Sesostris I, 1971 BC-1926 BC. A stela and a statuette from the Egyptian pharaohs Sesostris II and Amenemhet III have also been found.

Later Ugarit fell under the control of new tribes related to the Hyksos (possibly Hurrians), who mutilated the Egyptian-style monuments. During its high culture, from the 16th to the 13th century BC, Ugarit remained in constant touch with Egypt and Cyprus (named Alashiya).

The last Bronze Age king of Ugarit, 'Amurapi, was a contemporary of the Hittite king Suppiluliuma II. The exact dates of his reign are unknown.

Ugarit was destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age. The destruction levels contained Late Helladic IIIB ware, but no LH IIIC (see Mycenaean period). Therefore, the date of the destruction is important for the dating of the LH IIIC phase. As an Egyptian sword bearing the name of pharaoh Merneptah was found in the destruction levels, 1230 was taken as the date for the beginning of the LH IIIC. A cuneiform tablet found in 1986 shows that Ugarit was destroyed after the death of Merneptah, that is, before 1190, probably in 1195. It is generally agreed that Ugarit had already been destroyed in the 8th year of Ramses III.

Whether Ugarit was destroyed before or after Hattusa, the Hittite capital, is debated. The destruction is followed by a settlement hiatus. Many other Mediterranean cultures were deeply disordered just at the same time, apparently by invasions of the mysterious "Sea Peoples".

Ugarit - Alphabet

Scribes in Ugarit appear to have originated the Ugaritic alphabet around 1400 BC; 30 letters, corresponding to sounds, were adapted from cuneiform characters and inscribed on clay tablets (but cf. Byblos). Eventually the Phoenician heirs of Ugaritic culture spread their alphabet through the Aegean. Compared with the difficulty of writing Akkadian in cuneiform—such as the Amarna Letters, from ca. 1350 BC— the flexibility of an alphabet opened a horizon of literacy to many more kinds of people. The very limited literacy of Minoan culture at Knossos around the same time may be compared to that of Ugarit. (See the Linear B alphabet of Mycenaean Crete.)

Ugarit - Ugaritic literature

Apart from royal correspondence to neighbouring Bronze Age monarchs, Ugaritic literature from tablets found in the libraries include mythological texts written in a narrative poetry, letters, legal documents such as land transfers, a few international treaties, and a number of administrative lists. Fragments of several poetic works have been identified: the "Legend of Kirtu," the "Legend of Dan-el" the Ba'al tales that detail Baal-Hadad's conflicts with Yam and Mot, and other fragments.

The discovery of the Ugaritic archives has been of great significance to biblical scholarship, as these archives for the first time provided a detailed description of Canaanite religious beliefs during the period directly preceding the Israelite settlement. These texts show significant parallels to Biblical Hebrew literature, particularly in the areas of divine imagery and poetic form. Ugaritic poetry has many elements later found in Hebrew poetry: parallelisms, meters, and rhythms. The discoveries at Ugarit have led to a new appraisal of the Old Testament as literature.

Ugarit - Ugarit religion

• El
• Elyon
• Hadad
• Adon
• Anat
• Arsu
• Asherah
• Astarte
• Atargatis
• Azizos
• The Ba'als

• Ba`alat Gebal
• Berith
• Dagon
• Elohim
• Kubaba
• Liluri
• Manuzi
• Mot
• Salem
• Shaddai
• Yaw

Ugaritic religion centered on the chief god, Ilu or El, the "father of mankind", "the creator of the creation". The Court of El or Ilu was refered to as the 'lhm -- titles that were to have counterparts in the Elohim of Israel. In 1 Kings 22:19-22, we read of Yahweh meeting with his heavenly council -- the very description of heaven that one finds in the Ugaritic texts. The most important of the lesser gods were Baal-Hadad (familiar to all readers of the Bible), Athirat or Asherah (also familiar to readers of the Bible), Yam (the god of the stormy sea) and Mot (the god of death). Of particular interest here is the fact that Yam in Hebrew means "sea", and Mot means "death". Other gods worshipped at Ugarit were Dagon (God of Grain), Tirosch, Horon, Nahar (the River), Resheph (God of Healing), Kotar Hosis (the craftsman), Shachar (who is the equivalent of Satan), and Shalem (God of peace and the sunset). The city of Jerusalem (Uru-shalemu) is sometimes thought to be named after this divinity -- though it could just as easily have originally referred to a more generic, non-deified 'Peace'. The people of Ugarit were also plagued by a host of demons and lesser gods. They saw the desert as the place which was most inhabited by demons (and they were like the Israelites in this belief). There is also evidence of an early form of Yahweh.

KTU 1.1 IV 14 says:

sm . bny . yw . ilt

“The name of El, the son of YW.”

This text seems to show that El was known at Ugarit, though not as the Lord but as one of the many sons of YW (Yahweh?).

Thus the relationship between Ugaritic and Israelite religion is not exclusive; rather, Ugarit was representative of a much larger Bronze Age Canaanite cultural complex that influenced the beliefs of the Iron Age cultures that succeeded it, among which Israel was one, but also included the Phoenicians, the Philistines, and the peoples of the trans-Jordan.

Ugarit - Kings of Ugarit

Last kings of Ugarit according to cuneiform sources:

See also: Ugaritic language, Ugaritic alphabet

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Ugarit", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki