sign in sign up
<<
Home , Ammurapi, Dagon, Phoenicia, Ugarit, Ugaritic texts, Yam (god)

Digital Commons @ George Fox University

Faculty Publications - College of Christian Studies College of Christian Studies

2013 Melissa Ramos George Fox University, [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ccs Part of the Christianity Commons, and the History Commons

Recommended Citation Ramos, Melissa, "Ugarit" (2013). Faculty Publications - College of Christian Studies. 272. http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ccs/272

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Christian Studies at Digital Commons @ George Fox University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications - College of Christian Studies by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ George Fox University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. UCAL See Ukal. square miles, bounded by the natural geogra­ phy of the . To the west of the site lies VEL A descendant of Bani (Binnui in Neh. the Mediterranean, with a port that supplied 7:15) and a priest during postexilic times. His an important route for international . To family returned from exile with Zerubbabel (Ezra the south, the east, and the north are mountain 2:10). Listed by Ezra as one guilty of marrying ranges, including Mount Zaphon, whose maj­ a foreign wife (Ezra 10:34). esty is recorded in Isa. 14:13. Indeed, the name UGARIT In 1928 a Syrian peasant farmer "Zaphon" becomes simply a general word for stumbled by chance onto a funerary vault of "north" in . ancient provenance about half a mile from the The site ofTell Ras Shamra was occupied as M editerranean coastline of and about six far back as times (seventh millennium miles north of the modern-day of . BC),yet the kingdom ofUgarit properly dates to This unforeseen discovery led to an archaeologi­ the second millennium BC.The time ofUgarit's cal excavation ofTell Ras Shamra (Cape Fen­ greatest flourishing was the period just prior nel) by the eminent French excavator Claude to its destruction: from the fourteenth to the Schaeffer. What Schaeffer's team unearthed was twelfth centuries BC, during the Late not merely an ancient tomb, but a city complete Age. The prosperity of the kingdom reached with , private homes, temples, and streets its height during this period. Ugarit's coastal paved with stone. access and strategic location as a central hub Within the first year of excavation, the ruins within the matrix of Late super­ ofUgarit yielded a cache of clay tablets bear­ powers made Ugarit an important focal point ing a script in a language hitherto for international trade routes, both maritime unknown. From these mysterious texts schol­ and overland. Late Bronze Age society ars deciphered an alphabetic script written in was diverse and cosmopolitan, a feature perhaps a West Semitic language related to Canaanite, best epitomized by its scribal training center, , and biblical Hebrew. in which tablets bearing inscriptions in several different languages have been discovered. THE KINGDOM OF UGARIT Around 1200 BC, in approximately the same The site of the ancient city of Ugarit, Tell time frame as the exodus of the from Ras Shamra, is enclosed by two small rivers that Egypt, Ugarit met an untimely demise. (Note flow westward into the Mediterranean .The that some biblical scholars date the exodus from presence of water ensured the fertility of the Egypt during the fifteenth century BC rather surrounding plain; thus a good crop of cereals, than the thirteenth.) Royal documents from grapes, and was available to supplement the Egyptian and Hittite kingdoms, as well as the fishing industry as a local supply of food. The one from U garit, record a concern over a group kingdom encompassed about twelve hundred of invaders known as the . The Sea

1677 Ugarit 1678

Peoples likely originated in the northwest, leav­ Age in this region. Still other texts were written ing their mark on the coasts ofTurkey, , in various ancient Near Eastern languages; Hur­ and the . The descendants of the invading rian, Hittite, and Cypro-Minoan, and Egyptian Sea Peoples remained on the coast of , hieroglyphs were found inscribed into some ar­ and the biblical text refers to them as the Philis­ tifacts, as well as upon cylinder seals. tines.The destruction ofUgarit is attributed to Letters. The letter documents of Ugarit these invaders from the sea. The archaeological are formal in style with scripted introductions remains ofTell Ras Shamra show that many and closings, like most royal letters from the homes were abandoned as invaders the city ancient . Two notable examples may on fire. Ugarit burned to the ground sometime be pointed out. The first is a letter from the between 1190 and 1185 BC. king ofTyre in (for refer­ ences to the city ofTyre, seeJosh.l9:29; 2 Sam. THE TEXTS OF UGARIT 5:11; Ezek. 28) to the king ofUgarit.The occa­ More than fifteen hundred sion of the letter is the shipwreck of a Ugaritic have been discovered since excavations began at trade vessel bound for Egypt that crashed on Tell Ras Shamra.The texts are written on tablets the coastline ofPhoenicia after a violent storm. with wedgelike markings impressed into the clay The king ofTyre writes that none of the 's by scribes using a triangular-shaped reed stylus. crew survived, and its cargo was lost at sea. A The majority of the texts ofUgarit were found second epistolary example is a letter written by in and around the remains of the royal the king of in the Hittite grounds and temples, but some were found in (see Isa. l0:9;Jer. 46:2) to the last king ofUgarit, the homes of high-ranking palace administra­ . The occasion of this epistle is the tors and businessmen. The subject matter of Hittite king's perceived mistreatment of his these texts is diverse, and the various genres of daughter who was married to Ammurapi. The written material from Ugarit include official let­ letter suggests an impending divorce between ters, administrative and economic texts, scribal the royal couple, detailing the division of their training texts, and religious and literary texts. joint property. The cosmopolitan character of Ugarit is also Administrative and economic texts. The reflected in its texts. Among the various tablets royal palace and temples provided the driving discovered, many were written in Akkadian, engine ofUgarit's economy. Many discovered which was the lingua franca of the Late Bronze texts shed light upon the kinds of goods and activities that comprised local and international trade. Examples of administrative texts include Archaeo logica l remains of the pa lace at lists of various towns within the kingdom of Uga rit (fou rteenth-thirteenth cen tury BC) Ugarit, tributes that such towns paid to 1679 Ugarit

the king in the form of goods or labor service, flowed. The name "" was shared among Se­ lists of temple personnel with accompanying mitic languages and religions throughout the salaries, and details of distributed goods to those , including the OT.The name in royal service. Examples of economic texts in­ "El" in the can refer either to a foreign clude purchase receipts and bills oflading from god (e.g., Deut. 3:24: "What god [e!J is there maritime trade for products such as wool, grains, in or on earth who can do the deeds and olives, milk, and metal ore. mighty works you do?") or to the God oflsrael Scribal training texts. Among the rich ar­ (e.g. , Gen. 49:25; Deut. 7:9; Ps. 68:19-20). In chives of texts at Ugarit, more than one hundred the ofUgar it , El's female consort was tablets bear witness to scribal training activities the goddess (1 Kings 18:19;Judg. 3:7). scattered throughout the city grounds. Scribes El, however, was a more distant god in the were universally employed by royal dur­ religion ofUgarit, and the city's patron god was ing the Late Bronze Age, but the sheer number , the storm god. Baal was associated with of texts (thousands) found at Ugarit is unusual fertile fields, abundant crops, and the birth of for a relatively small excavation site. Archives of sons and daughters. The goddess is some­ texts were found in groups throughout the city, times described as Baal's consort, and at other and in many of these archives excavators found times as Baal's sister. Anat is the goddess of tablets of special interest, called "abecedaries." war, and the epic mythological literature of An abecedary is a tablet on which the cunei­ Ugarit portrays her warfare in rather graphic form is written. The and gruesome detail. Some scholars claim that contained thirty signs in roughly the same order Prov. 7:22-23 alludes to Anat's warfare in the as the , largely the same in con­ portrayal of the adulterous woman. tent as the English alphabet. In addition to Uga­ Some of the same epithets and accomplish­ ritic abecedaries, a Ugaritic-Akkadian abecedary ments of Baal found in the religious texts of was found in which equivalent phonetic values Ugarit are also attributed to in the are given from the Ugaritic alphabet into Ak­ OT. For example, Baal is called the "Rider of kadian signs. Lexicons, or word lists, also were the Clouds" in Ugaritic literature, and a simi­ discovered, listing words from various ancient lar description ofYahweh is found in Pss. 68:4 Near Eastern languages. Indeed, some of the ("Extol him who rides on the clouds") and 104:3 tablets found in the archives are clearly practice ("He makes the clouds his chariot and rides tablets used to train scribes: these tablets display on the wings of the wind").This likely reflects clear signs written by a scribal teacher at the a common ancient Near Eastern concern over top of the tablet, with the less skilled markings the regularity of rain for producing crops, as well of the apprentice scribe written below. Thus, it as a biblical assertion that Yahweh is superior is likely that Ugarit served as a training center to Canaanite deities, such as Baal, who claim for scribes from all over the ancient Near East, authority over the forces of nature. Indeed, the as well as its own. OT mocks the impotence of the Canaanite deity Religious texts. Two large temples domi­ Baal to wield power over the forces of nature in nate the northern region of U garit: narratives such as versus the prophets of the temple of Baal, the god of fertility, and the Baal (1 Kings 18:16-45). temple of , the god of grain. Mythol­ Baal is also portrayed in the religious litera­ ogy was the vehicle of religious expression in ture ofUgarit as the god who conquered the the ancient Near East. Stories about the gods rival gods Sea () and Death (Motu). The communicated something of the gods' purposes OT gives similar portrayals of Israel's God in and realms of authority. In the mythological texts such as Gen. 1:2; lsa. 25:7-8. In Gen. 1:2 literature ofUgarit, the pantheon of gods dwelt God's Spirit "was hovering over the waters," on Mount Zaphon, and from the dwelling place "the deep," or the primordial waters from which of El, the high god, rivers of life-giving water God brings to life the created world and all of Ukal ------1680

nature (cf] 38:8-11). In Isa. 25:7-8 Yahweh men, brave warriors and outstanding leaders" is portrayed as more powerful than death in a (1 Chron. 7:39-40). text of praise that extols his power by saying that "he will swallow up death forever." Again the UMMAH A town allocated to the tribe of biblical texts rely upon a stock set of religious Asher (Josh.19:30). Many scholars understand symbols, language, and imagery common to an­ "Ummah" to be a corruption of"Akko," a town cient Near Eastern peoples to portray Yahweh, in Asher's territory and absent from this list. the all-powerful, one God oflsrael. Otherwise no location is known.

CoNCLUSION UNCIRCUMCISED See Circumcision.

The discovery ofUgar it was an earthshaking UNCTION See Anoint, Anointed. event for biblical studies. Scholars have only begun to garner the gems of knowledge hid­ UNDEFILED See Clean, Cleanness. within the remains of this lost . The study of the Ugaritic language is invalu­ UNICORN The KJV translates as "unicorn" able for better understanding biblical Hebrew. the Hebrew word re 'em, referring to a "wild ox" Ugaritic sheds light particularly upon rare words (NIV). The KJV was following the Vulgate's and phrases used in the biblical text, as well as word unicornis (Pss. 22:21; 29:6; 92:10; Isa. upon literary devices and poetic structure, such 34:7; cf Lat. rinoceros in Num. 23:22; 24:8; Deut. as parallelism and meter. Furthermore, the study 33:17; Job 39:9-10) and the LXX's monokeros. ofUgarit's religion illuminates the backdrop of Legends about this fantastic animal flourished Canaanite worship, against which is set the wor­ in the Middle Ages. ship ofYahweh in the OT. Ugarit provides for UNITY The idea of unity has always been sig­ us a snapshot of Late Bronze Age , the nificant for God's people and their relatedness crucible of ancient Near Eastern culture from to one another. In the OT, unity centered on which the was birthed. the covenant and on Yahweh, who is the heart UKAL "Ukal" is found only in Prov. 30:1: "This of the covenant. In 2 Chron. 30:12 the hand man says to Ithiel, to Ithiel and to Ukal" (NET; of God was on the people to give them unity see NIV mg.). Although many translations (NET, to carry out the tasks that had been ordered by NASB, NKJV, KJV) treat "Ukal" (also spelled the king at God's command. In Ps. 133:1 the "Ucal") as a personal name, it may be a form of psalmist notes the goodness of the unity of the the "to be able," as in the NIV: "I am weary, extended family, no doubt also to be extended God, but I can prevail" (see also NRSV). to the unity of God's people, Israel. In the NT, unity centers on Jesus Christ, who ULAI A river or canal near the Persian capital is the heart of the new covenant. John emphasizes of where witnessed the revelation this unity as he records the teaching ofJesus on of the ram and the goat (. 8:2, 16). the relationship of the Father and the Son (John 14).1he Father is in the Son, and the Son is in ULAM (1) A son of Peresh and the father the Father. In John 16 Jesus notes that this is the of Bedan, of the tribe of Manasseh (1 Chron. 7:16-17; GW, NCV identify his father as standard by which oneness is to be compared; Peresh's brother, Sheresh; in the Hebrew and the disciples are to be one, just as the Father and many English versions the text is ambiguous). the Son are one. There will also be oneness be­ tween the triune God and his people as the Holy (2) The firstborn son ofEshek, descendant from Mephibosheth, his sons were "brave warriors Spirit comes to reside in the disciples. Unity and who could handle the bow" (1 Chron. 8:39-40). its various outcomes are the subject ofJesus' final prayer in the garden (John 17). ULLA A descendant of Asher and the father In Acts 1 Luke notes that the disciples were ofArah, Hanniel, and Rizia, three of the "choice unified after the resurrection and ascension as