Kingdom of Ugarit   Lattakia Ugarit Castle Saladin Tartous Arwad Island Amrit Al-Marqab Citadel The keeper of the site offers visitors (apart from a very well produced explanatory leaflet) a "souvenir" which some will regard as the most original one can bring back from Syria: a little rod of clay as big as your finger Moulded simply and engraved with cuneiform signs…. The signs are letters and in a row they make up the alphabet: "the oldest alphabet in the world". The original of this "document" is exhibited under triple glass in the Damascus Museum. It is recognized as dating from 14th century B.C. There is some controversy as to whether this alphabet of thirty cuneiform letters is earlier or slightly later than a linear alphabet found at Byblos, the letters of which are based directly on Egyptian hieroglyphs. Be that as it may, the order of the letters is identical and proved the kinship between the two. Carried by the Phoenicians, the alphabet was to be adopted by the Greeks, the Etruscans and Romans; and it is this alphabet which is used today by a large number of the peoples of the world. The First Alphabet The invention of the alphabet was at least as important for mankind as the invention of printing was to be, three thousand years later. Before the alphabet, writing was the privilege of a caste: the "scribes", who were the only ones who knew how to use hieroglyphs and ideograms and to mix them in learned combinations to reflect the meandering of the mind. The inspired idea of using only a limited number of signs, no longer representing entities, but sounds, and of grouping these signs together in an unchanging order, made it possible, almost from one day to the next, for anyone whoever he might be, king, merchant or village yokel, freely to put down and convey his thoughts, in short, to write. Though this little finger of dried loam is the most exciting discovery for the mind made at Ugarit, it is not the only one. The rooms devoted to this site in the Damascus and Aleppo Museums (and at the Louvre in Paris) are evidence of the activity and richness of this ancient port whose original is lost in the mists of prehistory. The golden age of Ugarit came between the 16th and 13th century B.C. The town was in constant relation with Egypt, Cyprus, the island in the Aegean Sea, Mycenae….. Gold ornaments, bronze weapons and ceramic vases were discovered, laid as offerings, in cellars directly under the subsoil of the houses. The royal palace consisted of ninety rooms laid out around eight inner courtyards. Thousands of engraved tablets were collected in the archives, in two private libraries and in two religious libraries.     Next
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