How it began
The Ugaritic alphabet was used at the city of Ugarit, at modern Ras Shamra on the coast of Syria, from the 15th to the 13th century BCE. Britannica reports that it is believed to have been invented independently of other cuneiform writing systems and of the linear North Semitic alphabet, although similarities in some letters suggest it may have been patterned on the latter. Surviving documents date from the 15th and 14th centuries BCE.
Before it existed
Cuneiform writing in the region used a large repertoire of signs that mixed word signs and syllables, which took long training to master. Alphabetic writing was already emerging in the same era: inscriptions from the Sinai Peninsula dating to about the start of the 16th century BCE appear to be alphabetic and are related to the North Semitic alphabet of 22 consonant letters.
How it works
The script has 30 symbols. Each was pressed into a clay tablet with a wedge-shaped stylus, so it looks like cuneiform, but each sign stands for a single sound in the manner of an alphabet. Three of the signs are syllabic signs for vowels, in contrast to the 22 purely consonantal letters of the North Semitic alphabet. Unlike that alphabet, Ugaritic was written from left to right.
How it spread
Most texts come from Ugarit itself, but two other inscriptions in the script were found at Beth-Shemesh and in Lower Galilee, in present-day Israel. Britannica notes that these finds suggest the script may have been known across a fairly wide area beyond the city where it was created.
Where it stands today
The script fell out of use after the 13th century BCE and was unknown until excavations began at Ras Shamra. On May 14, 1929, a workman at the newly discovered site uncovered the first tablets. The texts they recorded opened a field of study that passed its ninetieth year in 2019.
