Hidden amongst the swaying grasses of a 22-hectare mound on the outskirts of Ras Sharma on the northern coast of Modern Syria, are the remains of the ancient city of Ugarit. The city is unique. Occupied for over 4,000 years, it was the world’s first international port, a nexus point not only for goods but also for Bronze Age technologies and knowledge.

Ugarit’s life ended in the late Bronze Age when the mysterious ‘sea people’– the Phoenicians who conquered the Levant coastline in the early Iron Age- destroyed the town. Today, the remains of this ancient city are under threat again- this time from the ongoing Syrian civil war.

 

Ugarit: Lost and Found

 

The name Ugarit appeared in the records of the northern Syrian city of Mari and those of Tell al Amarna in Egypt, as well the ancient cities of Cyprus. But for millennia, the ancient trading city was effectively lost to history after its destruction.

Then, in 1928, a farmer from Ras Sharma was plowing a field when he began to unearth large stone blocks from the ground. The stones belonged to an underground tomb. This chance find sparked off a series of excavations where some remarkable discoveries occurred. Archaeologists gradually unearthed a vast palace complex, private houses, and two main temples crowning the mound of the site.

These buildings were accompanied by several deposits of cuneiform clay tablets. These tablets encompassed an unprecedented amount of diplomatic, legal, economic, administrative, scholastic, literary and religious texts written in Sumerian, Hurrian, Akkadian, and Ugaritic.

Experts compared the contents of these tablets to descriptions found in existing records. They found that the information within them all pointed to the place they were discovered to be the lost ancient city of Ugarit.

 

Ugarit’s Beginnings

 

Dating of the first city wall places Ugarit’s primary tangible occupation in the Neolithic. Surrounded by fertile agricultural land, the city produced wood, grain, and wine- for its own consumption and trade. This trade began in the seventh millennium BC when Ugarit began to exchange goods with settlements in the Upper Euphrates.

By the 3rd millennium, Ugarit had established more extensive trade connections. The city’s trade network now spread to the lower Euphrates and the Tigris in Mesopotamia. Its close coastal links to the eastern Mediterranean also made Cyprus a perfect trade partner, and Ugarit began to ship in copper from the island for the production of bronze.

 

Ugarit: A Trading Hub

 

By the 16th century BC, Ugarit had built its own ports on the coast, at modern Minet el Beida and Ras Ibn Hani, 1 km northwest of the city. These harbours formed the location for Ugarit’s bronze industry and at their peak maintained a 100 strong commercial fleet which imported metals and perfumes and exported Ugarit’s agricultural goods, bronze ware and cloth dyed with Tyrian purple produced from murex shells.

The scope of this trade had now exceeded the Euphrates valley. An Egyptian carnelian bead dated to the reign of the Middle Kingdom Pharaoh Senusret I suggests that by the early Bronze Age, Ugarit was trading with Egypt. Trade in the Aegean had also expanded, with Minoan Crete joining Cyprus by the middle of the period.

Ugarit’s trade did not just include goods; it also included knowledge. Ugarit’s alphabet evolved from complex pictorial cuneiform of other cultures into a more accessible phonetic form, which became the basis for the Greek and Latin alphabets.

 

The Golden Age of Ugarit

 

By the late Bronze Age, the city was at its peak. Ugarit was not only prosperous; it was also politically influential. This was despite the bitter hostility between the two ‘superpowers’of the region: Egypt and the Hittite empire. Both held overlordship of Ugarit at different times, yet the city somehow managed to stay neutral and retain a degree of self-autonomy. Ugarit’s own local dynasty ruled the city, and the 2000 km squared kingdom that accompanied it.

Much of the city’s remains date from this period. This golden age was the time of significant construction after Ugarit suffered damage from earthquakes and accompanying tidal waves. The new buildings were unique in the Levant. Designed to insulate against heat and cold and withstand earthquakes, they incorporated sophisticated methods of supplying water and draining waste.

Archaeologists have excavated several significant areas relating to this period. They include the royal palace, the commercial and residential areas of the city and the temples of Baal and Dagon on the city’s acropolis.

 

The End of Ugarit

 

However, Ugarit was to suffer subsequent earthquakes that destroyed the infrastructure of the city. The destruction and consequent disruption to Ugarit affected its ability to trade, and so may have weakened the city. However, Ugarit’s fall and final destruction can also be attributed to the rise of the Phoenicians. Also known as ‘the Sea People,’ this Semitic group of people originated from the eastern Mediterranean west of the fertile crescent. By the time of the early Iron Age, they were busy conquering the whole of the Levant coastline.

A letter from Ammurapi, the last Bronze Age king of Ugarit to the king of Alasiya stresses not only the plight of Ugarit but also the seriousness of the crisis faced by all the near eastern states by the advance of the Phoenician sea people. Ammurapi wrote:

“My father, behold, the enemy’s ships came (here); my cities (?) were burned, and they did evil things in my country. Does not my father know that all my troops and chariots(?) are in the Land of Hatti, and all my ships are in the Land of Lukka?…Thus, the country is abandoned to itself. May my father know it: the seven ships of the enemy that came here inflicted much damage upon us.”

This new culture was able to erode the superiority of Ugarit because they had access to more up to date technology in warfare and because of Ugarit’s weakened state. The city suffered invasion and was burnt to the ground, probably between 1192 and 1190 BC based on datable pottery.

 

 

Ugarit Today

 

Much of Ugarit remains buried, raising the question of what other secrets of the ancient Levant it could reveal. In the meantime, the fight for the Cuniformsurvival of this ancient city is not over.

In July 2014, a fire in the long grasses covering the remains flared up. Fortunately, no damage resulted. But at the same time, the remains of Ugarit face a far more pressing threat. For although the ruins lay in the government-controlled region of Latakia, and so untouched by the conflict of the Syrian civil war, fighting remained only a few miles away from Ugarit.

The continuing instability of the region means that the site could be one incursion away from destruction.  In the meantime, organisations such as Heritage for Peace and Syria’s Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums do their best to protect Syria’s ancient heritage, educating the military on both sides of the importance of their shared culture.

But the site is not safe. This time, war could not only end Ugarit’s life; it could destroy its legacy.

 

Sources

 

Ugarit: History and Archaeology by Jamal Hassan Haydar

Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece and Rome. Charles gates 2003. Routledge.

Monuments of Syria: A Historical Guide by Ross Burns. I. B Tauris Publishers. London: New York.19

The Cuneiform Texts of Ras Sharma-Ugarit  Claude F Schaeffer 1936, British Acadamy.

“Fire at the site of Ugarit” , Heritage for Peace, August 3, 2014