Ugarit was an important trading center from about 1900 b.e.v., and was active until its destruction around 1200 by, probably, the so-called Sea Peoples. It was located on the northwestern coast of Syria and was a very important port in the Mediterranean Sea; it is archaeologically attested that it was inhabited even from the Neolithic period. Like all settlements located in Palestine and Cannan, i.e., on the passageway leading from Egypt to Mesopotamia and Anatolia, it was constantly under the influence of the prevailing empire of the day, particularly the Egyptians and Hittites. Ugarit spoke Ugaritic, a northwestern Semitic language, unknown until the discovery of the archive.
The archive, discovered in 1928, dates to about 1300 b.e.v.. It consists of tablets written in eight languages and four scripts, most notably with an alphabetic script that uses cuneiform characters, however, which stand for the 30 sounds of the Ugaritic alphabet. Other artifacts are written in Egyptian hieroglyphics and Hittite hieroglyphics, used for Egyptian and Luvio (an Indo-European language of Anatolia), respectively, and in cuneiform characters, for Akkadian and Sumerian, Semitic languages, and for Hittite and Hurritic, which are Indo-European languages instead.
This gives an account of Ugarit's cosmopolitan nature due to its geographical location and the commercial nature of its economy.
