Ugaritic alphabet (alphabetic cuneiform)
Alfabeto ugarítico (cuneiforme alfabético)
- Date
- c. 1400 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Ugarit (Ras Shamra), Latakia, Syria
- Credited to
- Scribes of Ugarit
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
An alphabet of about 30 cuneiform signs impressed in clay, with which the scribes of Ugarit wrote their language in myths, rituals and letters. It adapts the alphabetic principle to cuneiform writing.
It was deciphered in 1930-1931 (Bauer, Dhorme, Virolleaud) from tablets excavated from 1929. It is not the direct ancestor of the linear Phoenician alphabet; it shares with it the principle and the order of the signs.
What it led to
- Ugaritic literature (Baal cycle, Kirta, Aqhat), key to Levantine poetry and religion
- abecedary tablets with the letter order that precedes the Phoenician and Hebrew alphabets
- documentation of the society, trade and diplomacy of the Late Bronze Age