Academic literature on the topic 'Ugarit (Ancient city)'

Dozens of temples were excavated in the Canaanite city-states of the Late Bronze Age. These temples were the focal points for the Canaanites’ cultic activities, mainly sacrifices and ceremonial feasting. Numerous poetic and ritual texts from the contemporary city of Ugarit reveal the rich pantheon of Canaanite gods and goddesses which were worshiped by the Canaanites. Archaeological remains of these rites include burnt animal bones and many other cultic items, such as figurines and votive vessels, which were discovered within the temples and sanctuaries. These demonstrate the diverse and receptive character of the Canaanite religion and ritual practices. It seems that the increased Egyptian presence in Canaan towards the end of the period had an influence on the local belief system and rituals in some areas, a fact which is demonstrated by the syncretic architectural plans of several of the temples, as well as by glyptic and votive items. Late Bronze Age religious and cultic practices have attracted much attention from Biblical scholars and researchers of the religion of Ancient Israel who are searching for the similarities and influences between the Late Bronze Age and the following Iron Age.

RESUMENEl objetivo de este artículo es reflexionar sobre los mecanismos de financiación y de control de las instituciones religiosas por los laicos en las primeras décadas de la conquista y colonización de Hispanoamérica. Investigar sobre la inversión laica en lo sagrado supone en un primer lugar aclarar la historiografía sobre laicos, religión y dinero en las sociedades de Antiguo Régimen y su trasposición en América, planteando una mirada desde el punto de vista de las motivaciones múltiples de los actores seglares. A través del ejemplo de restituciones, donaciones y legados en losAndes, se explora el papel de los laicos españoles, y también de las poblaciones indígenas, en el establecimiento de la densa red de instituciones católicas que se construye entonces. La propuesta postula el protagonismo de actores laicos en la construcción de un espacio cristiano en los Andes peruanos en el siglo XVI y principios del XVII, donde la inversión económica permite contribuir a la transición de una sociedad de guerra y conquista a una sociedad corporativa pacificada.PALABRAS CLAVE: Hispanoamérica-Andes, religión, economía, encomienda, siglos XVI y XVII.ABSTRACTThis article aims to reflect on the mechanisms of financing and control of religious institutions by the laity in the first decades of the conquest and colonization of Spanish America. Investigating lay investment in the sacred sphere means first of all to clarifying historiography on laity, religion and money within Ancien Régime societies and their transposition to America, taking into account the multiple motivations of secular actors. The example of restitutions, donations and legacies inthe Andes enables us to explore the role of the Spanish laity and indigenous populations in the establishment of the dense network of Catholic institutions that was established during this period. The proposal postulates the role of lay actors in the construction of a Christian space in the Peruvian Andes in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when economic investment contributed to the transition from a society of war and conquest to a pacified, corporate society.KEY WORDS: Hispanic America-Andes, religion, economics, encomienda, 16th and 17th centuries. BIBLIOGRAFIAAbercrombie, T., “Tributes to Bad Conscience: Charity, Restitution, and Inheritance in Cacique and Encomendero Testaments of 16th-Century Charcas”, en Kellogg, S. y Restall, M. 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Recent studies of the archaeozoological material from the site of Ras Shamra- Ugarit and of related textual sources have been added to the archaeological data; these studies demonstrate in an unexpected manner the importance which the wild boar held on this site during the Late Bronze Age. Is this importance characteristic of Ugarit or of the Late Bronze Age? This question encouraged us to look for traces of wild boars and wild boar hunting in the osteological, iconographic, and textual data for this period in neighbouring regions. This study represents the first stage in research which is intended to be carried out in more detail. Thus here we will only propose avenues for reflection. The site of Ras Shamra on the Syrian coast corresponds to the ancient city-state of Ugarit, the flourishing capital of a small coastal kingdom. Its key geographical situation and its port rendered it a point of contact between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean world. The city prospered in the Late Bronze Age before being destroyed by the ‘sea people’ in about 1180 BC. The ‘sea people’ and the ‘people from the North’ are known exclusively from Egyptian sources (Ramsès III, Medinet Abu). They are considered to be the destroyers of almost all the Levantine cities of the coast at that period. The excavations of the port (Minetel- Beida), the royal palace, the sanctuaries, and the residential quarters have produced many objects which are evidence of relations with Egypt, Cyprus, and Anatolia, as well as exceptional archives (2nd millennium BC)—numerous economic, administrative, literary, and mythological texts on clay tablets. Ugarit was an important commercial crossroads (Yon 1997). The archaeozoological study carried out on nearly 7000 bone remains reveals a food economy based on the breeding of cattle, sheep, and goats (Vila in press c). Evidence of pig rearing was not found. Hunting was not a common activity, being concentrated mainly on deer and sometimes wild boar. Although its domestic equivalent the pig was not bred at Ugarit, the wild boar was hunted and consumed on the site: 22 remains, some with butchering marks, provide the evidence (Vila & Dalix 2004).

The donkey was domesticated from the African wild ass in Northeast Africa some 7–6,000 years ago. This chapter looks at what happened when donkeys turned right and exited Africa into Asia. Though tracking their movement as far as India and China, its principal focus lies in the Ancient Near East, the region stretching from Israel north to Turkey and eastward into Iraq and Iran that is often termed the ‘Fertile Crescent’. Within this vast area, donkeys were used in daily life, including the agricultural cycle, just as they were in Egypt. But like there they also acquired other, more specialized uses and associations. Thus, after tracing the donkey’s spread I look at its role in three key aspects of the Near East’s earliest civilizations: the organization of trade; the legitimization of kingship; and religion. By 3500 BC the earliest cities had already emerged in Mesopotamia, the ‘land between the rivers’ Euphrates and Tigris. Over the course of the next 1,500 years, urbanization gathered pace across Palestine and Syria in the west, northward in Turkey, and east through Iran. Within Mesopotamia the independent Sumerian city-states of the south developed increasingly monarchical forms of government, seeing brief unity under the kings of Akkad and the Third Dynasty of Ur in the late third millennium BC. Then and later a city-state pattern of political organization also held in northern Mesopotamia (for example, at Aššur and its neighbour Mari) and in the Levant. In the mid-second millennium bc, however, much larger kingdoms emerged: the Hittites in central Turkey, Assyria in northern Mesopotamia, and Babylonia in its south. The Hittites, in particular, competed with Egypt for control of Syrian and Palestinian cities like Ugarit. When these Bronze Age powers collapsed around 1200 BC, their disappearance opened a window for smaller states like Israel to flourish briefly in their wake. Subsequently, however, first Assyria (911–612 BC) and then Babylon (612–539 BC) established much more centralized and extensive empires across the Near East before being subsumed within the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great and his successors.