482 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



The pottery is almost entirely Canaanite; i. e., of the typos found at 

 contemporary Palestinian sites. Only toward the end do we find 

 a few Cyprian vases. There are figmines of deities, bronze weapons, 

 silver and bronze jewelry much like those found at the great Phoe- 

 nician city Byblos. Egyptian objects, of the twelfth dynasty of 

 Egypt, are numerous, including many scarabs, a sphinx which was 

 the gift of Pharaoh Amenemhat III, and the statute of an Egyptian 

 commissioner to Ras Shamra. Below this stratum is a large layer of 

 sterile soil, showing that some time elapsed after the destruction of 

 the city of stratum III before the site was reoccupied. 



Stratum III — Late fourth millennium-most of third millennium 

 B. C. — The upper part of this stratum yields poor unpainted pottery 

 of Canaanite type. Below it is a fine painted pottery in geometric 

 patterns, similar to the Mcsopotamian pottery of Jemdet Nasr. 

 Pottery of this type, found in Cyprus, can now be approximately 

 dated by comparison with Ras Shamra. There are large buildings 

 of unbaked brick. 



Stratum IV — Fourth millennium. — The top of this stratum again 

 shows unpainted pottery. Then comes polychrome painted pottery 

 of geometric design and rare beauty, different from that of stratum 

 III and similar to the famous pottery of early Susa I in Persia, el- 

 Obeid, and the early levels of Carchemish and Niniveh. There is no 

 metal here; tools are of stone and flint, of obsidian and silex. There 

 are traces of brick buUdings which have been burned in some great 

 fire. 



Stratum V. — This stratum of unknown duration is definitely pre- 

 bronzc. Tools are of stone only, with great use of silex; obsidian is 

 rare. The pottery is archaic and unpainted. The lower levels show 

 neolithic culture, and below that is virgin soil. 



HISTORY OF UGARIT 



The site of Ras Shamra has been identified, first by historical 

 inference, and later by testimony of its own tablets, as the ancient 

 Ugarit, known from the Amarna correspondence. It exhibits an 

 antiquity which rivals the great mounds of Mesopotamia, having 

 been occupied from neolithic times. In successive ages it was in- 

 habited by peoples of the successive painted pottery cultures, related 

 culturally to the broad areas of painted pottery in Asia Minor, 

 Mesopotamia, Persia. During the third millennium, at a time when 

 Egypt and Babj^lonia already had centraUzed governments, there 

 appears a culture primarily related with the Canaanite area to the 

 south. We may call this the coming of the Phoenicians (or Canaan- 

 ites) into Ugarit, although we must be wary of identifying cultural 

 changes with ethnic movements (culture being understood to include 

 also all forms of material civilization); not every great change in 



