Everything about Ras Shamra totally explained
Ugarit (modern
Ras Shamra رأس شمرة ("top/head/cape of the wild
fennel" in
Arabic), near
Latakia,
Syria) was an ancient cosmopolitan port city, sited on the Mediterranean coast. 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.
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 ca. 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 by archaeologist
Claude Schaeffer from the
Prehistoric and Gallo-Roman Museum in
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,
Hurrian,
Akkadian (the language of diplomacy at this time in the ancient Near East), and
Ugaritic (of which nothing had been known before). 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.
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, ca. 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 Senusret I, 1971 BCE–1926 BC. A
stela and a statuette from the Egyptian pharaohs Senusret III and
Amenemhet III have also been found. However, it's unclear at what time these monuments got to Ugarit.
Amarna letters from Ugarit ca. 1350 BC records one letter each from
Ammittamru I,
Niqmaddu II, and his queen.
During its high culture, from the 16th to the 13th century BC, Ugarit remained in constant touch with Egypt and
Cyprus (named
Alashiya).
Destruction
The last Bronze Age king of Ugarit,
Ammurapi, was a contemporary of the
Hittite king
Suppiluliuma II. The exact dates of his reign are unknown. However, a letter by the king is preserved. Ammurapi stresses the seriousness of the crisis faced by many Near Eastern states from invasion by the advancing
Sea Peoples when he wrote a dramatic response to a plea for assistance from the king of
Alasiya. Ammurapi highlights the desperate situation Ugarit faced in letter RS 18.147:
» My father, behold, the enemy's ships came (here); my cities(?) were burned, and they did evil things in my country. Does not my father know that all my troops and chariots(?) are in the Land of Hatti, and all my ships are in the Land of Lukka?...Thus, the country is abandoned to itself. May my father know it: the seven ships of the enemy that came here inflicted much damage upon us.
Unfortunately for Ugarit, no help arrived and Ugarit was burned to the ground at the end of the
Bronze Age. Its 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. Since an Egyptian sword bearing the name of pharaoh
Merneptah was found in the destruction levels, 1190 BC was taken as the date for the beginning of the LH IIIC. A cuneiform tablet found in 1986 AD shows that Ugarit was destroyed after the death of Merneptah. It is generally agreed that Ugarit had already been destroyed by the 8th year of
Ramesses III--ie.1178 BC..
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".
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). A debate exists as to whether the Phoenician or Ugaritic alphabet was first. While many of the letters show little or no formal similarity, the standard letter order (preserved in the
latin alphabet as A, B, C, D, etc.) shows strong similarities between the two, suggesting that the Phoenician and Ugaritic systems were not wholly independent inventions. It was later the
Phoenician alphabet that spread through the Aegean and on Phoenician trade routes throughout the Mediterranean. The Phoenician system became the basis for the first true
alphabet, when it was adopted by Greek speakers who modified some of its signs to represent vowel sounds as well, and as such was in turn adopted and modified by populations in
Italy, including ancestors of the
Romans). 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. In contrast, the
syllabary (called
Linear B) used in
Mycenaean Greek palace sites at about the same time was so cumbersome that literacy was limited largely to administrative specialists.
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
Danel", 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 religion
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 referred to as the 'lhm or
Elohim. The most important of the great gods was
Hadad, the king of Heaven, Athirat or
Asherah,
Yam (Sea, the god of the primordial
chaos, tempests, and mass-destruction) and
Mot (Death). Other gods worshipped at Ugarit were
Dagon (Grain),
Tirosh,
Horon,
Resheph (Healing), the craftsman
Kothar-and-Khasis (Skilled and Clever),
Shahar (Dawn), and
Shalim (Dusk). Ugaritic texts have provided scholars with a wealth of material on the religion of the
Canaanites and its connections with that of the Israelites.
The religion of Ugarit and the religion of ancient Israel were not the same, but there were some striking overlaps. For example, the name of the ultimate divine authority at Ugarit was El, one of the names of the God of Israel (for example, Gen 33:20). El was described as an aged god with white hair, seated on a throne. However, at Ugarit, El was sovereign, but another god ran things on earth for El as his vizier. That god’s name was Baal. At Ugarit Baal was known by several titles: “king of the gods,” “the Most High,” “Prince Baal” (baal zbl), and—most importantly for our discussion—“the Rider on the Clouds.”
Baal’s position as “king of the gods” in Ugarit, Israel’s northern neighbor, helps explain the “Baal problem” in the Old Testament.
Jeroboam’s religion in the northern kingdom borrowed from Baal worship, and it soon began to look like there was no difference, or if there was a difference, they were so close that worshipping one or the other was just theological hair-splitting.
Kings of Ugarit
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