FEATURES
FEATURES
UGARIT
THE
BIRTHPLACE OF THE
WESTERN ALPHABET
By Habeeb
Salloum
The first time that I visited the ruins of Ugarit, today known as Ras Shamra, in the early 1970s, it was with a friend, who was at that time a professor of languages in one of the universities of Toronto. I have never forgotten the excitement he felt when he bought a replica of the first alphabet in the world engraved on finger-size tablet.
Since that time, I have visited these ruins, 16 km (10 mi) north of Latakia, Syria's major port, a half dozen times. Yet, for me its magic is still there. The alphabet that this ancient city gave the western world is, perhaps, the greatest contribution to the evolvement of humankind.
For centuries, Ugarit, the capital of a Syro-Canaanite/Phoenician
kingdom, was lost in history until in 1928 a local farmer's plough hit a large
piece of masonry buried in the soil. The
ensuing excavation established that the farmer had come upon the remains of one
of the most affluent and powerful cities in the ancient Middle East.
It had lain abandoned and uninhabited since, 1180 B.C. when it was destroyed by a fire set by the raiding Philistines, or
as they were more commonly known, Sea People.
In the ensuing centuries, the site was gradually covered with soil until
all traces of the city disappeared and its origin was lost in the mists of
prehistory.
Ugarit rose to prominence as a very prosperous agriculture and trading
centre at around 3,000 B.C. However,
it only became important as an independent kingdom from about 1,800 B.C. when
numerous commercial activities, especially in the field of sea-trade flourished.
The building of various types of ships and boats and other industrial
activities made Ugarit a well-known marketplace of the
ancient world. Life during this era
and the subsequent years, and the city's wealth and influence in the Eastern
Mediterranean, are recorded on the thousands of
tablets unearthed in the Royal Palace's library discovered in 1948.
Since that time more of these records on clay are continually being discovered in the ruins. In 1999, 400 new tablets were unearthed, throwing light on the economic relations between the Ugarit Kingdom and the other nations of the eastern Mediterranean, especially Egypt, Crete, Cyprus and the Anatolian kingdoms.
Also, from these tablets, it was established that in the 15th century
B.C. the first alphabet, which was the forerunner of all the western
alphabets, was created. Engraved
on a clay tablet the size of a man's finger, which is preserved at the National
Museum in Damascus, it is one
of the most important/miraculous innovations of humankind - a turning point in
human history. The Ugariti
alphabet, which has much similarities with modern Arabic, came into common use
between the 16th and 13th centuries B.C. and, among others, is the mother of all
European alphabets.
Consisting of thirty cuneiform letters based on the Egyptian hieroglyph,
it was adopted by the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans.
The invention of this alphabet, whose sequence and pronunciation is
similar to modern Arabic, was so important to mankind that it cannot be compared
to any other event in human history - more important than the invention of
printing was to be some 3,000 years later.
From the records on the tablets going back to the mist of time, it has
been established that the affluent in Ugarit lived well.
The homes of its wealthy merchants and influential public figures each
had its own bath, courtyard, well and burial chamber.
This was at a time when in Europe, people still living on the edge of the
Stone Age.
These tablets indicate that women played an important
role in Ugarit society. In
admiration and appreciation of women, there was found written: “You are the
treasures of the horizon, the deer of the mountain, the shining morning star,
the blue nature of marble, the rain in good times, the water of cornfields and
the plentiful harvests.” The
tablets go on to state that women possessed wisdom, and their wise expressions
led to prosperity and gave birth to hope. Giving
even more stature to women, they considered the birth of a child a happy
occasion that might put an end to curses of gods.
The tablets also contained a great amount of administrative, diplomatic,
economic, legal, literary, music, religious and scholastic texts. From the texts, it was brought to light the philosophical
viewpoint of the Ugariti people who believed that immortality was the essential
quality of the gods while death is the destiny of all mortals.
Some of the mythological poetry found, much older than the Iliad and
Odyssey, are enchanting in their beauty. In
the field of music, the tablets revealed that hundreds of years before Euripides
and Pythagoras, the musical note was written in Ugarit. Musician,
today, can play this oldest written musical piece - four lines of words and the
tune sis lines - called the 'Ugarit Song' which consists of five modes - the
same modes wrongly believed to be Pythagoras' modes.
Another important find was the library of the diplomat named Rapanou. Apart from his official correspondence, there were found, dictionaries listing animals, deities, weights and measures used at the time, and the first recorded eclipse of the sun in March 1223 B.C. A tablet in the library gave an account of how to treat sick horses and, very precious to philologists, was a lexicon on clay of Sumerian, Hurrian, Babylonian and Ugaritic words.
By far, the most important building unearthed on the site is Ugarit's Royal
Palace, described by some archaeologists and historians as the most
beautiful palace in the ancient world. Consisting
of over 90 rambling rooms and six courtyards with small gardens of fruit trees,
a decorated swimming pool built from attractive stones and a furnace for baking
documents written on clay tablets. The
palace also included a number of decorated halls and rooms for keeping the
archives and the treasury, as well as bed rooms and workshops for skilled
artisans. The palace reflects the
opulence of Ugarit in its days of glory. Its
fountains and sophisticated water and sewerage systems must have been the talk
of the ancient world.
Today, as one surveys this palace from atop the massive ruins, its
confused layout is somewhat difficult to make out.
Like all other buildings on the site, only waist-high piles of stone
outline its rooms, the narrow edging streets and buildings.
On the highest point on the site, which appears to be only a heap of
stones, one can still see the foundations of a temple dedicated to Bâal,
the supreme god of the Canaanites and Arameans whose father was El - the father
of gods and men.. Poems found in
Ugarit tell the story of how Bâal with the help of his sister, Anat, won
kingship of the gods. A second
temple, dedicated to Dagôn, god of the underworld, fertility and wheat,
is not too far away. Dagôn was
highly honoured by the Amorites, a nomadic people inhabiting Upper Syria, whose
most famous king was Hamurabi of Babylon fame.
Besides its palace and temples there has also been excavated, a
well-preserved grave with clay and bronze instruments used in funerary rites,
stone bases of a great number of structures, wells and watercourses and numerous
streets. Through the last half a
century, these excavations, besides Ugarit's renowned tablets, have yielded a
great amount of artifacts like statues of animals, gods and goddess - today on
display in museums spanning continents.
From the museum in nearby Latakia and Tartous to those in Aleppo,
Damascus, Paris and New York, Ugarit offers its treasures to the world.
The city continues to be a rich source of historic information for
archaeologists. On a continuing
basis, every year, new finds are unearthed by excavation teams working in the
ruins.
Recent archaeological
artifacts discovered by these excavation teams verify that Ugarit was the source
of creative architecture and it was a kingdom where cultivation of the land
flourished. The unearthed findings,
dating back to the first half of the second millennium B.C., indicate that the
agricultural sector was of prime importance and that the nearby al-Kabir River
contributed a great deal to the development of agricultural, especially the
cultivation of grain, olive and vines, as well as the raising of cattle and pet
animals.
From the findings, it was determined that building activities flourished
in the Kingdom and Ugarit developed a unique architecture.
Most homes comprised two stories closely connected to form well-arranged
quarters divided by parallel streets that were vertically traversed with main
roads. In many houses, there were
courtyards, which included family cemeteries and wells - covered with decorated
stones.
In addition, it has been recently substantiated that the Ugaritis developed handcraft products made from gold, silver, bronze, copper, as well as different types of decorated clothes. Unique and ornamented utensils made of bone, stone, pottery and clay were also discovered during the excavations.
One of the richest archaeological sites in the world, the ruins of Ugarit are continuing to give archaeologists an insight into the immense contribution made by this ancient city to the later civilizations. The excitement my professor friend felt, when pressing that tiny replica of a clay tablet in his hand I, myself, still feel today. Its engraved letters is what has given us our modern technological world.
Habeeb Salloum is a Canadian freelance writer and author who has traveled
extensively to many parts of the world and has written comprehensively about the
countries and their cuisines.
His email is: habeeb.salloum@sympatico.ca.
