P1180250 Louvre Langue ougaritique Tablette poeme mythologique AO16641 et 16642 rwk

The Ugaritic texts are a corpus of ancient

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

texts discovered in 1928 in

Ugarit Ugarit (; , ''ủgrt'' /ʾUgarītu/) was an ancient port city in northern Syria about 10 kilometers north of modern Latakia. At its height it ruled an area roughly equivalent to the modern Latakia Governorate. It was discovered by accident in 19 ...

(Ras Shamra) and

Ras Ibn Hani Ras Ibn Hani (), Ugaritic Raʾšu, is a small cape located north of Latakia, Syria on the Mediterranean Sea. It is an important archaeological site as it was occupied almost continuously from the late Bronze Age until Byzantine times.Cohen, 2006 ...

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

, and written in

Ugaritic Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeology, archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycl ...

, an otherwise unknown

Northwest Semitic language Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze Age. ...

. Approximately 1,500 texts and fragments have been found to date. The texts were written in the 13th and 12th centuries BC. The most famous of the Ugarit texts are the approximately fifty

epic poem In poetry, an epic is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. With regard to ...

s; the three major literary texts are the Baal Cycle, the

Legend of Keret The Legend of Keret, also known as the Epic of Kirta, is an ancient Ugaritic epic poem, dated to Late Bronze Age, circa 1500 – 1200 BCE. It recounts the myth of King Kirta of Hubur. It is one of the Ugaritic texts. In the legend, Kirta i ...

, and the

Tale of Aqhat The Tale of Aqhat or Epic of Aqhat is a Canaanite myth from Ugarit, an ancient city in what is now Syria. It is one of the three longest texts to have been found at Ugarit, the other two being the Legend of Keret and the Baal Cycle. It dates ...

. The other texts include 150 tablets describing the Ugaritic cult and rituals, 100 letters of correspondence, a very small number of legal texts ( Akkadian is considered to have been the contemporary language of law), and hundreds of administrative or economic texts. Unique among the Ugarit texts are the earliest known

abecedaries An abecedarium (also known as an abecedary or ABCs or simply an ABC) is an inscription consisting of the letters of an alphabet, almost always listed in order. Typically, abecedaria (or abecedaries) are practice exercises. Non-Latin alphabet ...

, lists of letters in alphabetic cuneiform, where not only the canonical order of the later

Phoenician script The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found ...

is evidenced, but also the traditional names for letters of the alphabet. Other tablets found in the same location were written in other cuneiform languages ( Sumerian,

Hurrian The Hurrians (; ; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri) were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurro-Urartian language, Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria (region) ...

, and Akkadian), as well as

Egyptian ''Egyptian'' describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of year ...

and

Luwian Luwian (), sometimes known as Luvian or Luish, is an ancient language, or group of languages, within the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. The ethnonym Luwian comes from ''Luwiya'' (also spelled ''Luwia'' or ''Luvia'') – ...

hieroglyphs, and

Cypro-Minoan The Cypro-Minoan syllabary (CM), more commonly called the Cypro-Minoan Script, is an undeciphered syllabary used on the island of Cyprus and at its trading partners during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age (c. 1550–1050 BC). The term "Cy ...

Discoveries

Initial discovery

On excavation of the city of

, found accidentally in 1928–29 at Ras Shamra,

, several

deposits A deposit account is a bank account maintained by a financial institution in which a customer can deposit and withdraw money. Deposit accounts can be savings accounts, current accounts or any of several other types of accounts explained below. ...

clay tablets were found; all dating from the last phase of Ugarit, around 1200 BC. The texts were found to be written in an otherwise unknown

.Aaron Demsky, 1977. "A Proto-Canaanite Abecedary dating from the period of the Judges and its implications for the history of the Alphabet", Tel Aviv 4:47ff. Other tablets found in the same location were written in other cuneiform languages ( Sumerian,

and Akkadian), as well as Egyptian and

hieroglyphs, and

. The tablets were found in diplomat, (Rapanu’s) private palace library, and his temple library. His libraries were a rarity of the times. His libraries at Ugarit contained diplomatic, legal, economic, administrative, scholastic, literary and religious

texts Text may refer to: Written word * Text (literary theory), any object that can be read, including: **Religious text, a writing that a religious tradition considers to be sacred **Text, a verse or passage from scripture used in expository preachin ...

1958 excavations

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, School of Religion,

Claremont Graduate University The Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is a private, all-graduate research university in Claremont, California, United States. Founded in 1925, CGU is a member of the Claremont Colleges consortium which includes five undergraduate and two grad ...

Claremont, California Claremont () is a suburban city in eastern Los Angeles County, California, United States, east of Los Angeles. It lies in the Pomona Valley at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. As of the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census it had ...

. They were edited by Loren R. Fisher in 1971.

1973 excavations

After 1970, succeeding Claude Schaeffer were Henri de Contenson, followed by Jean Margueron,

Marguerite Yon Marguerite Yon, or Marguerite Yon-Calvet, née Calvet, is a French Archaeology, archaeologist and historian, specializing in the ancient Near East, particularly Ugarit in Syria. She is widely recognized for her archaeological work on Ugarit, where ...

, then Yves Calvet and Bassam Jamous, who since 2005 has held the office of Director General of Antiquities and Museums.

Henri de Contenson 250px, Henri de Contenson Henri de Contenson (4 March 1926 – 8 September 2019) was a French archaeologist and a researcher at the CNRS, The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (National Center for Scientific Research), a research orga ...

, ''Préhistoire de Ras Shamra, Ras Shamra-Ougarit VIII'', 2 volumes, ERC, 1992; Marguerite Yon, ''The City of Ugarit at Tell Ras Shamra'', Eisenbrauns, 2004, (Translation of ''La cité d'Ugarit sur le Tell de Ras Shamra'' 1979) In 1973, an archive containing around 120 tablets was discovered during rescue excavations.

1994 excavations

In 1994 more than 300 further tablets dating to the end of the Late Bronze Age were discovered within a large

ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

masonry building.

Notable texts

Tablet-private letter-AO 19940-P5280339-white

Approximately 1,500 texts and fragments have been found to date, all of which have been dated to the 13th and 12th centuries BC. The most famous of the Ugarit texts are the approximately fifty

s. The most important literary document recovered from Ugarit is arguably the Baal Cycle, describing the basis for the religion and cult of the Canaanite

Baal Baal (), or Baʻal, was a title and honorific meaning 'owner' or 'lord Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power (social and political), power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The ...

; the two other particularly well known texts are the

and the

. The other texts include 150 tablets describing the Ugaritic cult and rituals, 100 letters of correspondence, a very small number of legal texts ( Akkadian is considered to have been the contemporary language of law), and hundreds of administrative or economic texts. Some other tablets include scribal exercises; some of them are unique for being the earliest known

, lists of letters in alphabetic cuneiform, where the canonical order of Hebrew-Phoenician script is evidenced, and one of them might even indicate the traditional names for letters of the alphabet. The tablets have been used by scholars of the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...

texts and have revealed ways in which the cultures of

ancient Israel and Judah The history of ancient Israel and Judah spans from the Israelite highland settlement, early appearance of the Israelites in Canaan's hill country during the late second millennium BCE, to the establishment and subsequent downfall of the two ...

found parallels in the neighboring cultures. The tablets reveal parallels with

Israelite Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

practices described in the Bible; for example,

Levirate marriage Levirate marriage is a type of marriage in which the brother of a deceased man is obliged to marry his brother's widow. Levirate marriage has been practiced by societies with a strong clan structure in which exogamous marriage (i.e. marriage o ...

, giving the eldest son a larger share of the inheritance, and redemption of the first-born son were practices common to the people of Ugarit as well.

Resources

* – the second edition (and the first in English) of the standard collection of Ugaritic texts * – the first edition of the standard collection of Ugaritic texts * *

References

{{reflist, 30em Ugarit 1928 archaeological discoveries 2nd-millennium BC literature Ugaritic language and literature