An Independent Kingdom     Lattakia Ugarit Castle Saladin Tartous Arwad Island Amrit Al-Marqab Citadel   To the right of the main street, and thereof immediately behind the fortified postern, stood the royal palace, whose somewhat confused layout is rather difficult to make out. Ugarit was an independent kingdom from the 18th century B.C. Its military and economic history, as well as the names of its kings, have been revealed in detail by the tablets found in the archives of the palace. It was thus learned that the excellent relations existing between Ugarit and Egypt endured even after the conquest of Syria by the Pharaoh Thutmose III in the 15th century. Ugarit as a State, was not however to survive the invasion of the Philistines, the tribes that came down from the north, sometimes called the Sea Peoples, and overwhelmed the country at the end of the 13th century B.C. The stables and outbuildings of the palace were arranged on the left of the palace, while behind it was the residential district, where the layouts of vast, rich dwellings can be seen on the ground. Weapons and works of art were found here, as well as the library of a diplomat named Rapanou. This Rapanou must have had an encyclopedic mind, since he preserved, apart from his official correspondence, sorts of dictionaries containing lists of animals and deities, and of weights and measures then in use, and even an account of the way to treat sick horse and still more precious for philologists, a comparative lexicon of Sumerian, Hurrian, Babylonian and Ugaritic words. Under the protection of El, Bel and Dagon By climbing through the brush to the highest point on the tell, the visitor can gain a better idea of the general layout of the town: palaces and fortresses face south, the landward side, the side for relations with the peoples from inland; on the slope going down towards the sea, the commercial and harbor districts (the shore has now sanded up and receded a good hundred meters); opposite, quite compact, popular districts traversed by narrow streets; up here, on this sort of acropolis, the part for the gods, the temples. One temple was dedicated to Dagon (or Dagan), the god of fertility, the god of wheat, particularly honored by the Amorites, a nomadic people from Upper Syria, of whom Hamurabi, at Babylon, was the most famous king. The priest’s houses and the funerary vaults stood between the two temples, Treasures buried in hiding-places and hundreds of engraved tablets have been discovered. A high priest, who no doubt practiced divination, kept terracotta pebbles in his library, shaped like livers or lungs, after having first engraved on them the answers to questions put to him by his clients. A site occupied since Neolithic times These examples go to show that no visit to the site of Ugarit can yield its full meaning unless it is supplemented by visits to the Tartous, Damascus and Aleppo Museums, where fine examples of the rich treasures unearthed here are expertly displayed. Returning from the temple area towards the exit (and the cafeteria near the keeper’s house), the visitor walks along the side of a dig being made by the archaeologists to study a deep stratigraphic cross-section. Another section has also been cut in the main courtyard of the royal palace. These soundings have produced firm evidence of the occupation of the sit since the Neolithic Era towards the beginning of the fourth and perhaps even into the fifth millennium. Out at sea, the cargo boats sail, by heading for the port of Lattakia…     Previous
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