In the late 1920′s a Syrian farmer plowing a field on a hill turned up a strange clay tablet. A French archaeological team went to investigate. In 1928, that hill, behind Ras Shamra, a sleepy north Syrian port town, was discovered to be a tel, a mound which was actually the site of an ancient city. Within it were the ruins of Ugarit, a major Bronze Age Canaanite city, including a large palace and two temples. Many clay tablets were found during the couse of the dig, including a number within the Chief Priest’s quarters.

The tablets were in cuneiform, but examination quickly revealed that although the shapes of the characters were familiar, they were unrelated to the familiar cuneiforms of Sumer and Akkad. Rather than the usual thousands, there were only 28 characters. Here was evidence of the first alphabet! A relationship between this character set and Hebrew allowed the French team, led by Charles Virolleaud, to make early tentative translations between 1930-1933.

This discovery has had a major effect on the study of the Ancient Near East. Refinements have been in the translations during the succeeding 65 years, and current scholars involve linguistic knowledge of Arabic to augment their work. The information in the various tablets has spread beyond the field of archaeology, changing, among others, the face of history, religion, and mythology. Whereas previously knowledge of the Pagan religions of the region was limited to a few untrustworthy references in Greek and Roman writing, and moreso, the highly biased accounts in the Torah/ Bible and the negative writings of early religious writers of Judaism and Christianity. As Ancient Near Eastern scholar Cyrus Gordon says “…Ugaritic is the greatest literary discover from antiquity since the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform…” (The Ancient Near East, p. 99) Read the rest of this entry »