The
Ugaritic language, discovered by
French archaeologists in 1928, is known only in the form of writings found in the lost city of
Ugarit, near the modern village of
Ras Shamra,
Syria. It has been extremely important for scholars of the
Old Testament in clarifying Biblical Hebrew texts and has revealed more of the way in which ancient
Israelite culture finds parallels in the neighboring cultures.
Ugaritic was "the greatest literary discovery from antiquity since the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform[1]". Literary texts discovered at Ugarit include the Legend of Keret, the Aqhat Epic (or Legend of Danel), the Myth of Baal-Aliyan, and the Death of Baal — the latter two are also collectively known as the Baal Cycle — all revealing a Canaanite mythology.
The Ugaritic language is attested in texts from the 14th through the 12th century BC.[2] The city was destroyed in 1180/70 BC.
The Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform abjad (alphabet without vowels), used from around 15th century BCE. Although it appears similar to Mesopotamian cuneiform, it was unrelated (see Ugaritic alphabet). It is the oldest example of the family of West Semitic scripts that were used for Phoenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic. The so-called long alphabet has 31 letters, while the short alphabet has 22. Other languages (particularly Hurrian) were occasionally written in it in the Ugarit area, although not elsewhere.
