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Ugaritic Letters
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Origin Fourteenth to early twelfth century BCE, attested only in tablets from Ras Shamra.
Ugaritic Letters are the thirty cuneiform signs of the alphabet used to write the Northwest Semitic language of Ugarit, on the Syrian coast, from roughly the fourteenth century BCE until the city's destruction in the twelfth. A school tablet preserves them in a fixed order close to the sequence later used for Hebrew and Phoenician, making it the earliest attested alphabetic order known. The tablets they were used to write include the Baal Cycle, the tale of Aqhat and the tale of Kirta, the fullest surviving Canaanite mythological literature.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingThe thirty signs of the Ugaritic cuneiform alphabet in their attested abecedary order, including the three signs that mark the glottal stop against a, i and u, and the extra sign found at the tail of the longer abecedary tablets. 2 Size of the Traditional Set Origins
Origin PeriodFourteenth to early twelfth century BCE, attested only in tablets from Ras Shamra. 2 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Baal, Deities This source names Baal directly: "The tablets they were used to write include the Baal Cycle, the tale of Aqhat and the tale of Kirta, the fullest surviving Canaanite mythological literature."
This source names Canaanites directly: "Ugaritic Letters are the thirty cuneiform signs of the alphabet used to write the Northwest Semitic language of Ugarit, on the Syrian coast, from roughly the fourteenth century BCE until the city's..."
This source names Phoenicians directly: "Ugaritic Letters are the thirty cuneiform signs of the alphabet used to write the Northwest Semitic language of Ugarit, on the Syrian coast, from roughly the fourteenth century BCE until the city's..."
Ugarit, Cities This source names Ugarit directly: "Ugaritic Letters are the thirty cuneiform signs of the alphabet used to write the Northwest Semitic language of Ugarit, on the Syrian coast, from roughly the fourteenth century BCE until the city's..."
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