2361 AM · ≈ 1400 BCE · world history
Ugarit and its texts
At Ugarit the tales of Baal are written down, and cuneiform is cut down to thirty signs.
Ugarit on the Syrian coast is a busy port under Egyptian and Hittite influence, where the scribes of half a dozen peoples cross paths. Its scribes reduce cumbersome cuneiform to some thirty signs, one for each consonant: one of the first recorded workings of the alphabetic principle. On its tablets survive the poems of Baal and Anat, of the god El and the kingdom of death — and in them one recognises turns of phrase and images familiar from the Psalms and the books of the prophets. Around 1190 BCE the city perishes in the general collapse of the Bronze Age and is never rebuilt.