May 14, 1929. The first clay tablets from Ugarit were unearthed. These texts brought to light a new language—named Ugaritic after the ancient site—a relative of Biblical Hebrew. Ugaritic is a Northwest Semitic language written in cuneiform. Unlike other cuneiform languages, Ugaritic is alphabetic, meaning that its cuneiform symbols represented sounds—similar to the Latin alphabet—rather than words or syllables.
A vast archive of several thousand tablets—with everything from administrative documents and abecedaries to ancient poetry and mythological texts—was uncovered; the texts were written in numerous languages, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian, Akkadian, Cypro-Minoan, Hurrian and Ugaritic. Since most theories about Canaanite religion have been developed based on these tablets, Ugaritic texts are sometimes referred to as the Canaanite Bible.
May 14, 1929. The first clay tablets from Ugarit were unearthed. These texts brought to light a new language—named Ugaritic after the ancient site—a relative of Biblical Hebrew. Ugaritic is a Northwest Semitic language written in cuneiform. Unlike other cuneiform languages, Ugaritic is alphabetic, meaning that its cuneiform symbols represented sounds—similar to the Latin alphabet—rather than words or syllables. A vast archive of several thousand tablets—with everything from administrative documents and abecedaries to ancient poetry and mythological texts—was uncovered; the texts were written in numerous languages, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian, Akkadian, Cypro-Minoan, Hurrian and Ugaritic. Since most theories about […]
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