Do you know that the oldest cuneiform alphabet in history was discovered in Ugarit?

Damascus, (SANA) The oldest cuneiform alphabet in history was discovered in Ugarit (Ras Shamra), an ancient city located on the Syrian coast, dating back to 1500 BC.

This alphabet was found transcribed on small cuneiforms “clay tablets” in the Royal Palace of Ugarit, discovered in 1948; and according to archaeologists, the Ugaritic writing system is the oldest alphanumeric writing system in the world.

The Syrians, in the early 13th century BC, invented a cuneiform writing system easier to learn and use than Sumerian and Akkadian, and it is the Ugaritic cuneiform writing system, which is considered the oldest in the world with an integrated grammatical system.

The tablets were discovered at the archaeological sites of Ras Shamra (Ugarit) and Ras Ibn Hani in the coastal province of Lattakia show that there were schools to teach reading and writing in many languages ​​such as Sumerian, Akkadian, Minoan Cypriot, Hittite cuneiform texts and the Hurrian cuneiform texts.

According to historian, Mahmoud al-Sayyed, the Ugaritic cuneiform writing system consists of 30 cuneiform alphabetic signs or symbols, 27 of which are consonants and the remaining three are phonetic.

The Ugaritic alphabet was also the basis for the invention and appearance of the Phoenician alphabet that was invented in the year 1000 BC. C, and the Aramaic alphabet and other alphabets that were derived from Phoenician and Aramaic, such as Hebrew, Greek, Nabataean, Palmyrene, Syriac, and South North Arabic.

Translated by: Ruaa al-Jazaeri