entity · site_ugarit
Ugarit / Ras Shamra
Also known as: Ras Shamra
A city and kingdom on the Levantine coast, Ugarit connected a local hinterland to maritime commerce and royal diplomacy. Its archives preserve dealings with Alashiya, associated with Cyprus, as well as evidence for different writing traditions.
Ugarit: a place in a connected world
A city and kingdom on the Levantine coast, Ugarit connected a local hinterland to maritime commerce and royal diplomacy. Its archives preserve dealings with Alashiya, associated with Cyprus, as well as evidence for different writing traditions.
Read the city through its correspondence: messages moved between courts, merchants and ports. A connection recorded in a letter is firmer evidence than a modern line drawn between two cities.
What changed?
Violent destruction and abandonment
What continued?
No substantial immediate urban reoccupation is recorded in this account. That does not tell us where every inhabitant went.
Review and provenance
Specialist reviewer: not recorded. Review date: not recorded.
Dataset workflow: proposed. This is separate from specialist review.
Confidence describes the stated assessment; it does not certify expert approval. How review works.
Chronology
Dating intervals may describe uncertainty or phases; their width alone does not establish event duration.
1600 BCE–1180 BCE
Precision: approximate
- informs · contextualizes
The Calm Before the Storm: Selected Writings of Itamar Singer on the Late Bronze Age in Anatolia and the Levant — Itamar Singer (2011)Provides textual chronology and interpretation.
Locator: Ugarit final correspondence - informs · documents writing
Cypro-Minoan Inscriptions, Volume 1: Analysis — Silvia Ferrara (2012)Documents script connection.
Locator: Cypro-Minoan at Ugarit - informs · provides provenance evidence
The Location of Alashiya: New Evidence from Petrographic Investigation of Alashiyan Tablets from El-Amarna and Ugarit — Yuval Goren, Shlomo Bunimovitz, Israel Finkelstein, Nadav Na’aman (2003)Links correspondence to Cyprus.
Locator: Alashiya tablets from Ugarit
Research description
Ugarit provides direct textual and archaeological evidence for exchange with Alashiya, Cypro-Minoan writing outside Cyprus, and final maritime warnings. Its destruction is an external baseline event, not a synchronized date for every Cypriot site.
Evidence and sources
- supports · supports entity record
‘Our City Is Sacked. May You Know It!’ The Destruction of Ugarit and Its Environs by the Sea Peoples — Jesse Michael Millek (2020)Supports the existence, description, classification, or historical context of Ugarit.
- supports · supports entity record
Destruction at the End of the Late Bronze Age in Syria: A Reassessment — Jesse Michael Millek (2019)Supports the existence, description, classification, or historical context of Ugarit.
- informs · contextualizes
The Calm Before the Storm: Selected Writings of Itamar Singer on the Late Bronze Age in Anatolia and the Levant — Itamar Singer (2011)Provides textual chronology and interpretation.
Locator: Ugarit final correspondence - informs · documents writing
Cypro-Minoan Inscriptions, Volume 1: Analysis — Silvia Ferrara (2012)Documents script connection.
Locator: Cypro-Minoan at Ugarit - informs · provides provenance evidence
The Location of Alashiya: New Evidence from Petrographic Investigation of Alashiyan Tablets from El-Amarna and Ugarit — Yuval Goren, Shlomo Bunimovitz, Israel Finkelstein, Nadav Na’aman (2003)Links correspondence to Cyprus.
Locator: Alashiya tablets from Ugarit
Referenced records
- Geography assertion for site_ugarit · geography assertion