Pre-alphabetic writing was complex. It was such a specialized skill in ancient societies that it restricted literacy to trained scribes. However, the advent of the alphabet changed this. For now, the number of symbols used to communicate concepts and information diminished. Fewer symbols meant the alphabet was easier to understand- and as a result, more people could learn to read and write.
Archaeologists have found clay tablets in the city of Ugarit that provide the earliest examples a written alphabet. The question is, does this mean that Ugarit was the place this alphabet developed?
Pre Alphabetic Writing: Sumerian Cuneiform and Egyptian Hieroglyphics.
Before the development of the alphabet, there were two primary forms of writing: cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Cuneiform consisted of a series of symbols impressed into clay tablets with the end of a stylus. Hieroglyphs used straightforward pictures. Based on finds made at the ancient Sumerian city of Kish in modern Iraq, Cuneiform developed in Sumeria and predated its more familiar Egyptian counterpart.
Both cuneiform and hieroglyphics relied on a series of pictographic symbols to convey ideas. However, both systems were complex because of the sheer number of symbols involved. Cuneiform symbols ran into the hundreds. However, by 500 BC, Egyptian hieroglyphics employed several thousand symbols. To complicate matters further, each symbol could be interpreted as a word, a syllable or a specific speech sound depending on the language that was employing them. Unsurprisingly, these two complicated systems could only be created and interpreted by specially trained scribes.
Ugarit’s Alphabet
An alphabet, on the other hand, is much simpler. By definition, it is a system that relies upon a limited number of letters, listed in a fixed order, each with a specific and fixed sound. The limit on the number of letters in use means that it is easier to use and so more accessible to the general population.
The first lists of letters that can be deemed alphabetic date to between the 14th and 12th centuries BC and were discovered in Ugarit. Ugarit’s alphabet was written on a finger-length clay tablet 5.5cm x 1.3cm. It consisted of 30 cuneiform symbols based on a ‘one sound, one sign’ system. Composed of 27 consonants and three vowels, the alphabet was written from left to right. Dated to no later than the 12th century BC, this is the earliest example of a written alphabet, which has led to speculate that the system was developed in Ugarit.
The Ugaritic Texts
To date, archaeologists have found around 5000 clay tablets in Ugarit. They are remarkably diverse regarding subject matter and language. As well as those written in Ugarit alphabet script, there are records written in the Akkadian, Sumerian and Hurrian languages as well as in Egyptian and Hittite hieroglyphs and Sumerian, Minoan and Hurrian cuneiform.
The tablets give an overview of life in Ugarit and the eastern Mediterranean in general. Many are letters between the King of Ugarit and foreign monarchs, as well as bureaucratic and political records, written in Akkado-Babylonian the language of diplomacy in the region. Tablets found in Ugarit’s temples describing the mythology of the Ugaritic religion also employed the Ugaritic alphabet as well as regional cuneiform.
The most remarkable fact about these texts is they were used extensively throughout Ugarit’s population. Tax and commercial records were discovered in the homes of merchants. It seems that even ordinary, private citizens had libraries at home, stocked with books including dictionaries and encyclopedias.
On one of the tablets from Ugarit is the world’s oldest musical composition. It includes three verses written in Hurrian and six lines in Akkadian. The inclusion of the names of Mesopotamian musical notes indicates that this was poem accompanied by music.
The First Alphabet?
How the Ugaritic alphabet developed is unknown. Some scholars believe it was a unique innovation, a genuine attempt to simplify cuneiform. Others think that because Ugarit’s alphabet was not found outside the city, it represented a localized development from an earlier Semitic alphabetic system.
There is also a school of thought that believes the Ugaritic alphabet could have been influenced by the Phoenician alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet was the precursor of the systems used later by the Greeks and Romans. However, the earliest known inscription of the Phoenician alphabet is 500 years later than that of Ugarit. Based on this evidence, it is the Ugaritic alphabet, rather than Phoenician, that is the first ancestor of all alphabets.
Ugarit was the ideal location for such innovation to occur. It was a nexus of international trade, and its records show the numerous different languages and systems of writing to which its merchants were exposed. So, it was the perfect place for someone to experiment with ways to record information in a simpler form- and for other people to pick up on the idea and develop their own alphabetic way of writing. The evidence suggests that even though the Ugaritic alphabet did not spread in its original form beyond the city of its creation, its principles, such as the fixed set of symbols including vowels and consonants did seem to have continued and influenced other systems.
Sources
Ugarit: History and Archaeology, Jamal Hassan Haydar
The Articulatory Basis of the Alphabet, Robin Allot, In Becoming Loquens,2000. (pp. 167-199, ed. by Bernard H. Bichakjian, Tatiana Chernigovskaya, Adam Kendon and Anke Mðller. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.)
Ugaritic, Dennis Pardee in The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia (ed Roger D Woodard) Cambridge University Press, 2008
