UGARIT IN THE FOURTEENTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES B.C.

In previous chapters, frequent reference has been made to the city of Ugarit, the North Syrian coastal town whose site, the modern Ras Shamra, meaning ‘Fennel Cape’, is situated some seven miles north of Latakia. More is known about Ugarit during the two centuries before her downfall, in about 1200 B.C., than about any other Syrian city of the second millennium. The reasons are twofold. First, whereas most excavators of ancient mounds in Syria have been forced to concentrate on the central area only, where public buildings were likely to be found, at Ras Shamra over two-thirds of the site have been systematically explored, and the nearby port installation has also been uncovered. Secondly, a wealth of documentary evidence is becoming available with the gradual publication of some thousands of tablets found in private and public buildings in various parts of the city. Some of these tablets are the letters and memoranda of merchants and private individuals, written in the local dialect and script; others deal with matters of domestic administration: lists of towns and country districts, for instance, furnishing contributions to the government in the form of silver, produce or corvée labour, lists of bowmen and slingmen, or payrolls and tax receipts. There are diplomatic archives written in Akkadian, the language of international intercourse, and legal texts which are for the most part also in Akkadian. Large tablets in Ugaritic contain mythological and liturgical texts, invaluable for our knowledge of Canaanite religion, and there are lists of offerings and omen texts for the use of priests.