We went 16 km North of Latakia to a place called Ras Shamra or literally means the Fennel Head, a sixty-five foot mound located near Minet el Bida. This is the site claimed by many local and foreign Researches and Scholars, where the old kingdom or the ancient city of Ugarit was – A kingdom that had a golden past in administration, education, diplomacy, law, religion and economics between the 16th and 13th centuries B.C. It gave humanity the first alphabet in the world. This alphabet is still preserved on a clay tablet at the National Museum in Damascus.
Amir suggested us to spend around 15 minutes only. We took few shots for our remembrance, and then we went to the information center and spent some time admiring the serenity of the remnants of the kingdom. Proud to be in this place where we had our opportunities flagging the Malaysian Jalur Gemilang.
There were few groups of European tourist exploring the well preserved place, which is covered by wild grass and flowers. Ugarit's location was forgotten until 1928 when a peasant accidentally opened an old tomb while plowing a field. Excavations have since revealed an important city that takes its place alongside Ur and Eridu as a cradle of urban culture, with a prehistory reaching back to 6000 BC. Most excavations of Ugarit were undertaken by archaeologist Claude Schaeffer from the Prehistoric and Gallo-Roman Museum in Strasbourg.
The excavations uncovered a royal palace of 90 rooms laid out around eight enclosed courtyards, many ambitious private dwellings, including two private libraries (one belonging to a diplomat named Rapanu) that contained diplomatic, legal, economic, administrative, scholastic, literary and religious texts. Crowning the hill where the city was built were two main temples: one to Baal the "king", son of El, and one to Dagon, the chthonic god of fertility and wheat.
We went 16 km North of Latakia to a place called Ras Shamra or literally means the Fennel Head, a sixty-five foot mound located near Minet el Bida. This is the site claimed by many local and foreign Researches and Scholars, where the old kingdom or the ancient city of Ugarit was – A kingdom that had a golden past in administration, education, diplomacy, law, religion and economics between the 16th and 13th centuries B.C. It gave humanity the first alphabet in the world. This alphabet is still preserved on a clay tablet at the National Museum in Damascus.
Amir suggested us to spend around 15 minutes only. We took few shots for our remembrance, and then we went to the information center and spent some time admiring the serenity of the remnants of the kingdom. Proud to be in this place where we had our opportunities flagging the Malaysian Jalur Gemilang.
There were few groups of European tourist exploring the well preserved place, which is covered by wild grass and flowers. Ugarit's location was forgotten until 1928 when a peasant accidentally opened an old tomb while plowing a field. Excavations have since revealed an important city that takes its place alongside Ur and Eridu as a cradle of urban culture, with a prehistory reaching back to 6000 BC. Most excavations of Ugarit were undertaken by archaeologist Claude Schaeffer from the Prehistoric and Gallo-Roman Museum in Strasbourg.
The excavations uncovered a royal palace of 90 rooms laid out around eight enclosed courtyards, many ambitious private dwellings, including two private libraries (one belonging to a diplomat named Rapanu) that contained diplomatic, legal, economic, administrative, scholastic, literary and religious texts. Crowning the hill where the city was built were two main temples: one to Baal the "king", son of El, and one to Dagon, the chthonic god of fertility and wheat.
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