Syria is home to the ancient city of Ugarit, where alphabetic cuneiform was discovered.
Ugarit was a Bronze Age port city on the Mediterranean coast near modern Ras Shamra in northwestern Syria. It flourished especially during the second millennium BC and maintained connections with Egypt, Cyprus, Anatolia, and the wider Levant.
Archaeologists found thousands of clay tablets at the site. Many were written in Ugaritic, a Northwest Semitic language recorded with a cuneiform alphabet of about 30 signs. This system combined the wedge-shaped writing technique of cuneiform with an alphabetic structure.
Ugarit was destroyed around 1180 BC, during the upheavals associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse. The tablets preserve myths, diplomatic records, legal texts, and economic documents, including material that illuminates the religious traditions of the ancient Levant.