City state near the Mediterranean coast where tablets of alphabetic cuneiform have been excavated by a French expedition

Ugarit (modern site Ras Shamra رأس شمرة; meaning "top/head/cape of the wild fennel" in Arabic) was an ancient cosmopolitan port city, sited on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria a few kilometers north of the modern city of Latakia. Ugarit sent tribute to Egypt and maintained trade and diplomatic connections with Cyprus (called Alashiya), documented in the archives recovered from the site and corroborated by Mycenaean and Cypriot pottery found there. The polity was at its height from ca. 1450 BC until 1200 BCE.