The Religious Texts from Ras Shamra (Ugarit)—Canaanite Cults Exposed

The Religious Texts from Ras Shamra (Ugarit)—Canaanite Cults Exposed

One of the most important discoveries of the 20th century was the recovery of hundreds of clay tablets that had been housed in a library situated between two great temples, one dedicated to Baal and another dedicated to Dagon, in the city of Ugarit—modern Ras Shamra in north Syria. These clay tablets date from the 15th to early 14th centuries b.c. They are inscribed in the earliest-known alphabet written in wedge-shaped signs. Professor H. Bower of the University of Halle recognized this new writing as Semitic. Numbers of scholars such as E. Dhorme and Charles Virolleaud began working on the decipherment of this new Semitic language.

First intimations of the archaeological importance of the ancient city of Ugarit, which was unknown until 1928, came in the spring of that year when a Syrian peasant plowing in his field a little north of present-day Minet el-Beida suddenly came across some antiquities. On April 2, 1929, work began at Minet el-Beida under the direction of Claude F Schaffer. After a month’s work he changed to the nearby tell of Ras Shamra. Only a few days’ work demonstrated the importance of the new location. On May 20 the first tablets were uncovered. Schaffer continued excavations from 1929 to 1937. Between 1929 and 1933, the bulk of significant religious texts were recovered in the royal library in the area. Many of these were inscribed in an early Canaanite dialect of the late Bronze and early Iron periods.