Ugaritic Texts and Documents



Ugaritic Texts

The Ugaritic texts are a body of ancient cuneiform writings in Ugaritic, a previously undiscovered Northwest Semitic language, that have been found in Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and Ras Ibn Hani in Syria since 1928. There have so far been 1,500 manuscripts and fragments discovered. Written in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries BC, the texts.


The roughly fifty epic poems, the Baal Cycle, the Legend of Keret, and the Tale of Aqhat are the three most well-known Ugarit literary works. A relatively limited number of legal texts (Akkadian is thought to have been the language of law at the time), 100 letters of correspondence, 150 tablets explaining the religion and rites of the Ugaritic people, and hundreds of administrative or economic documents are among the other materials.