A Primer on Ugaritic: Language, Culture, and Literature - enenuru

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Ugaritic <strong>Primer</strong>
1.3 BRIEF HISTORY OF ANCIENT UGARIT
Ugarit has a long history. 4 The earliest settlement of the site dates
back to at least the Neolithic period (6500 BCE) and continues
almost uninterrupted through the end of the Late Bronze Age,
when it was a thriving commercial center. Even before the
discovery of the site of ancient Ugarit, scholars had known of its
existence and significance from archives excavated in Amarna in
Egypt and Boghazköy in Asia Minor. One of the Amarna Letters,
for example, suggests Ugarit’s grandeur: “Look, there is no mayor’s
residence like that of the residence of Tyre. It is like the residence
in Ugarit. Exceedingly [gr]eat is the wealth [i]n it” (EA 89:48–53). 5
This reference should not lead one to exaggerate Ugarit’s
commercial wealth and function as an entrepôt for grain supplies
moving to the Hittite court. 6 Although Ugarit never became a major
power, it did rise to become a prosperous commercial center as
well as a medium-sized state covering over 1,240 square miles
[2000 km 2 ] (see Figure 1.2).
The most important phase of Ugarit’s history for the present
study begins around 1900 BCE. Both the Ugaritic king list (KTU
1.113) and the Ugaritian epic literature point to the arrival at this
time of semi-nomadic pastoral tribes from the Mesopotamian
steppelands known as the Amorites, who settled ancient Ugarit
and initiated a new urban phase of its history. 7 The foundations of
the Ugaritian royal dynasty until its destruction are traced to this
Amorite expansion. The prosperity of ancient Ugarit at this time
was closely tied to the larger kingdoms of the Near East; first Mari
in the early second millennium, then Egypt, and finally the Hittite
kingdom. Mari was a particularly important site on the middle
Euphrates that flourished under the Amorites in the early second
4 See the essay by I. Singer, “A Political History of Ugarit,” in HUS, 601–733.
5 See W. Moran, The Amarna Letters, p.162. See also EA 1, 47, 54, 152.
6 A. Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East, c. 3000–330 BC (London/New York,
1995), 303.
7 On the Amorites, see G. Buccellati, The Amorites of the Ur III Period
(Naples, 1966), and his more recent survey, “Amorites,” in The Oxford
Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East (Oxford, 1997), 107–11.