Enkomi and the other cities of east and south Cyprus had close ties with the important Canaan-ite trading city of Ugarit, located just across the sea on the Syrian coast. The name of Ugarit appeared in tablets found at Mari, Amarna, and Hattusa/Bogazkoy, but until well into the twentieth century the location of this city was unknown. After a farmer chanced upon a tomb chamber near the large tell of Ras Shamra, north of Lattakia, a French team led by Claude Schaeffer began excavations on the tell and in adjacent areas in 1929. By 1933, locally found cuneiform tablets made clear that Ras Shamra was to be equated with Ugarit, and the puzzle of Ugarit’s location was solved. With few interruptions, excavations have continued ever since. Campaigns since 1978 are aiming at a comprehensive understanding of urbanism at Ugarit, whereas earlier seasons had concentrated, in more traditional fashion, on uncovering monumental buildings.
Settlement at Ugarit began in the Neolithic period, then continued through the ChalcoUthic and Bronze Ages. Contacts with Egypt and Cyprus were established already in the Early Bronze Age, with Minoan Crete in the Middle Bronze Age. We know of a nameless Middle Bronze Age king of Ugarit, now famous for his curiosity about foreign wonders. He wrote to Hammurabi, a king of Yamhad (Aleppo), requesting to see the palace at Mari: “Show me the palace of Zimri-Lim! I wish to see it.” His letter, written on a clay tablet, was preserved in the Mari archives.
During the Late Bronze Age, the city enjoyed its greatest prosperity. The people of Ugarit were Canaanites, a Semitic people of the Levantine coast. Much is known about local history, religion, and mythology because of important finds in fourteenth - to thirteenth-century BC levels of tablets in various languages, including Akkadian, Hittite, Hurrian, Cypro-Minoan, and the local Ugaritic language itself. This last was written in an alphabetic cuneiform script of some thirty signs, the oldest known alphabetic writing system anywhere in the world.
Despite pressure from their powerful neighbors, the Ugaritians maintained a certain degree of autonomy. Indeed, under the umbrella of first Egyptian, then Hittite overlordship, a local dynasty held sway through the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC. Whatever controls these Great Powers exercised, they clearly did not impede Ugarit’s prosperity. The city’s wealth derived from the local agricultural base, which provided for exports of grain, wine, and timber; from local industries such as metalworking, perfumes, and especially the manufacture of a highly esteemed purple dye from the murex, a local shellfish; and from the importing and transshipment of copper from Cyprus. Although the city itself lay in from the sea, Ugarit maintained a port on the nearby coast in an area known today as Minet el Beida, from the modern Syrian name for the small bay. Minet el Beida was not Ugarit’s only port; recent excavations at nearby Ras Ibn Hani have revealed another active commercial center on the Ugaritian coast.
Like most cities, Ugarit endured fire and earthquake, but always managed to come back. In the early twelfth century BC, however, circumstances were different. The city was thoroughly destroyed ca. 1190—1180 BC by invading Sea Peoples, one event amidst the turmoil and catastrophe that afflicted the eastern Mediterranean basin at this time. This destruction ended the great era of local Ugaritic culture. Subsequent occupation would only be small in scale.
World History
