KTU classifies ten texts as legal material, which indicates at a cursory level that the texts record some important transactions. Two of these documents are disbursement records (KTU 3.1; 3.10), two are royal grants of property (KTU 3.2; 3.5), two are guarantees of one or two persons (KTU 3.3; 3.8), two deal with some obligation called ʾunṯ (KTU 3.4; 3.7), one attests to the establishment of a mrzḥ (KTU 3.9), and one is uncertain (KTU 3.6). In this chapter you will read a guarantee document (KTU 3.3), a text documenting the ransom of people (KTU 3.4), and the establishment of a mrzḥ (KTU 3.9).

The cadre of alphabetic cuneiform legal texts is diverse, but not numerous. Legal documents were drawn up in the lingua franca appropriate for this learned city and the ancient Near East, usually Akkadian. Thus, the writing of administrative documents in the Akkadian language and form provides yet another witness to the close connection between Ugarit and Mesopotamia. This kind of Akkadian transaction text reveals something of Ugaritic society. For instance, on the basis of 17.238, a legal document from Hattusilis III detailing the treatment of fugitives from Ugarit to Hatti, three kinds of people were considered “Ugaritians”: “a son of Ugarit” (dumukurUgarit) was a citizen who received a salary, “a slave of the king of Ugarit” (ìr lugal šakurUgarit) was not a citizen but had land granted by the king, and “a slave of the slave of the king of Ugarit” (ìr ìr lugal šakurUgarit).