Religious thought between Ugarit and ancient Greece in the middle of the second millennium BC

Abstract

Phoenician culture in general, and Ugaritic culture in particular, remained largely undetected until the period of archaeological excavations. This period marked the beginning of the Phoenician cultural achievement and its impact on other civilizations, both in the ancient East and the city-states of the Mediterranean basin, most notably the Greek civilization. Phoenician thought began to spread, led by Ugaritic religious thought, which contained intellectual and cultural treasures and a cultural heritage of the development of religious thought in the ancient East, beginning with the worship of natural phenomena and the adoption of multiple deities to gain the favor of natural forces and offer sacrifices to them. This was crystallized through the weaving of myths, whose heroes were often deities representing the forces of good and evil, darkness and light, truth and falsehood, and the resulting development of arts and knowledge. This enabled the Phoenicians to transfer this heritage to other civilizations, such as the Greek civilization, as the target model in this research, to illustrate the significant influence of Ugaritic religious thought on Greek.