Cyprus and Ugarit: A Tale of Two Late Bronze Age Mercantile Polities
March 2025 | Vol. 13.3
By A. Bernard Knapp
Cyprus and Ugarit represent two of the best known, well-connected polities in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean. Over nearly half a millennium (ca. 1650–1200 BC), close, long-term, mercantile relations existed between Ugarit and its ports (Minet el-Beidha — see Figure 1; Ras ibn Hani) and the harbour towns of Cyprus (e.g., Enkomi, Hala Sultan Tekke, Kition, Maroni — see Figure 2).
Figure 1. Minet el-Beidha and Ugarit (Google maps).
Figure 2. Map of Cyprus, with sites mentioned (prepared by Nathan Meyer).
For various reasons — not least the abundant material and documentary evidence that has accumulated over nearly 100 years — there have been few attempts to quantify and evaluate the nature of those relations, especially from a theoretical vantage point. In a recent study (entitled Cyprus and Ugarit), I engaged interpretative concepts such as merchants and mercantilism, actors and agents, and maritime spheres (regions) of interaction, in the attempt to gain new insights into Cypro-Ugaritic relations during the Late Bronze Age.
In material terms, I sought to quantify and consider some features common to both polities (e.g., ashlar masonry, urban mortuary practices, composite anchors, the Cypro-Minoan script), and then examined more specifically the amount and types of Cypriot material uncovered in Ugarit (notably pottery, metals, and seals). Because it is more difficult to assess materials found on Cyprus that derived specifically from Ugarit, it was necessary to engage as proxies Levantine goods and products more generally (e.g., Canaanite Jars).
The known documentary evidence from Ugarit related to these two polities — 23 texts written in Akkadian cuneiform, 23 in the local, Ugaritic cuneiform script — is discussed with respect to people, politics and professions. Although there are several instances of texts and other materials (e.g., clay balls, potmarks) inscribed in the “Cypro-Minoan” script in both Ugarit and on Cyprus, that script remains undeciphered, and renders an unknown language.
All these streams of complementary evidence enable us to form a broad impression of material and mercantile connectivity in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean. In turn, this evidence allows us to reflect upon the merchants of Ugarit and Cyprus, maritime spheres of interaction, and the people involved in these transactional worlds.
Amongst the more prominent and key components of materials exchanged between Cyprus and Ugarit are the pottery, metal items, and seals or seal impressions. For example, the most prevalent types of Cypriot pottery found at Ugarit are the following wares: Base-ring (226 examples), White Slip (216 examples), White Shaved (54 examples). In turn, an estimated 350 Canaanite Jars (Figure 3) have been recovered from 21 different late Middle and Late Bronze Age sites on Cyprus.
Figure 3. Canaanite Jar from Arpera Mosphilos. Courtesy of the Director, Department of Antiquities, Cyprus.
Documentary, material, and science-based evidence indicates that Cyprus was the main source of copper that was either used in Ugarit’s bronze industry or distributed elsewhere through Ugarit’s ports. Excavations at the Ugaritic port of Ras Ibn Hani, for example, not only uncovered various metallurgical installations, pot bellows, crucibles, and tuyeres but also the only known oxhide ingot mould. Oxhide ingots (Figure 4) are, of course, widely regarded as one of the signature material features of Late Bronze Age Cyprus. From metal workshops at Ugarit come several tools — spatulae, shovels, tongs and a hammer — that find nearly identical counterparts in various Cypriot hoards. Likewise, a cache of metallurgical tools from Minet el-Beidha includes some axes, sickles, tongs, and a large, spiral-handled shovel closely associated with tools from a metal foundry at Enkomi.
Turning to cylinder seals, excavations at Ugarit and Minet el-Beidha have produced more examples regarded as Cypriot in style than all other Levantine sites combined. Several seals show different carving styles like those of some seals found at Episkopi and Enkomi on Cyprus. Amongst the seal impressions found at Ugarit are two of “Elaborate style” from the House of the merchant Rašap-Abu, a ‘harbour-master’ of the 13th century BC. The ownership and design of seals embedded long biographies that give us some indication of the meaning of Cypriot seals found overseas. Although these seals and sealings cannot be linked to specific people or traders from Cyprus, there are obvious associations between their contexts and some Ugaritic merchants who were intimately involved in what has been seen as a unique, integral relationship with Cypriots.
Turning to documentary evidence that treats relations between these two polities, some of the most relevant comes from the houses of merchants such as Yabninu, Urtenu, Rap’ānu, and Rašap-Abu. These men played multiple roles within the polity of Ugarit and operated both under palatial contract as well as on a private basis. Along with their families, they were involved in multiple aspects of production and exchange, and fully engaged in Cypro-Ugaritic relations. The House of Urtenu contained the most recently excavated major archive at Ugarit, with nearly 550 tablets treating international royal correspondence as well as administrative and commercial matters. Urtenu’s House also contained two Cypro-Minoan “labels” as well as a range of Cypriot pottery. Along with Yabninu, Urtenu took part in multiple and diverse, private exchange activities involving the import or export of goods from or into Cyprus, the Aegean, Anatolia, Egypt and northern Mesopotamia. Although merchants like Urtenu likely maintained most of the ships involved in maritime expeditions, the crown at Ugarit also invested in commerce and occasionally taxed merchants. In one transaction, a Cypriot trader sought to purchase ships offered for sale by one of his Ugaritic counterparts, but the king of Ugarit had to sign off on it.
Overall, then, by the end of the Middle Cypriot period (ca. 1650 BC), some people from Cyprus began to enjoy close contacts with merchants and elites in Levantine coastal polities, notably with those from Ugarit and its ports. Cypriots thus acquired not only knowledge of distance and mercantile practices but also new types of material goods — not least tin which, along with copper, were the primary ingredients for producing bronze.
Figure 4. Copper oxhide ingot. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1911 (11.140.7). Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Owing at least in part to their geographic position, some Cypriot coastal towns and Levantine port towns like those at Ugarit would have hosted commercial sailing vessels that were instrumental in the exchange networks that underpinned maritime trade in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean. Merchants, mariners and emissaries in all the polities involved would have been familiar with their foreign counterparts, and some certainly travelled to overseas destinations. Coastal ports on both Cyprus and in the Levant were oriented towards the connecting sea: those on Cyprus were geared to answer foreign demand for copper and other manufactured goods, while those in the Levant — in particular at Ugarit — served as trading hubs on a much broader scale with a deeper time depth, and arguably with a more culturally embedded form of mercantile behavior.
The study on Cyprus and Ugarit tallied 670 Cypriot pottery vessels from various deposits at Ras Shamra, Minet el-Beidha, and Ras Ibn Hani, and an estimated 350 Canaanite Jars found at 21 different Middle and Late Bronze Age sites on Cyprus. The significance of these and all the other objects traded between Ugarit and Cyprus derives from the events and travels to which they were linked throughout their life histories and among the people who displayed or exchanged them. Key social objects, they were imbued with a past that linked their new owners to other élites in the eastern Mediterranean interaction sphere. The biographic aura embedded in such luxury goods offered Cypriot as well as Ugaritic élites a blueprint for power and authority. We might envision all such elite objects, and the social practices they facilitated, as “calling cards” from one wealthy mercantile family to another, a type of social lubrication that enabled further self-enrichment and politico-economic power.
The objects and ideologies of connectivity that characterised these exchanges formed an integral part of the cosmopolitan Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean. The impression one gains is that of two very different societies which shared a vital, commercial link if not an actual familial relationship. Ugaritic merchants operated out of a long-established trading emporium, whereas their Cypriot counterparts were evolving within a productive, island-based economy (raw materials first, finished goods later). In other words, from the more loosely formed society on Cyprus, one that was rapidly innovating in commercial enterprises, something new and distinct emerged. Although Cyprus and Ugarit were two very different kinds of society, they shared a vital maritime and mercantile link, one that — over time — had a transformative impact on Cyprus.
A. Bernard Knapp is Emeritus Professor of Mediterranean Archaeology at University of Glasgow and Honorary Research Fellow at the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, Nicosia. His recent book, Cyprus and Ugarit: Connecting Material and Mercantile Worlds, was recently published by Sidestone Press.
Further Reading:
Knapp, A.B., 2024. Cyprus and Ugarit: Connecting Material and Mercantile Worlds. Leiden: Sidestone Press. (Free to read online!)
Knapp, A.B., and N. Meyer, 2023. Merchants and mercantile society on Late Bronze Age Cyprus. American Journal of Archaeology 127: 309–338.
Matthäus, H.m 2014. Ugarit, Zypern und die Ägäis: spätbronzezeitliche Kulturkontakte, Grundlagen und Wirkungen. Ugarit-Forschungen 45: 413-472.
Monroe, C., 2009. Scales of Fate: Trade, Tradition, and Transformation in the Eastern Mediterranean. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 357. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag.
Yon, M., 2013. Cyprus et Levant nord à la fin de l’Âge du Bronze: témoignages écrits et documents archéologiques. Pasiphae 7: 207–219.
How to cite this article:
Knapp, A.B. 2025. “Cyprus and Ugarit: A Tale of Two Late Bronze Age Mercantile Polities.” The Ancient Near East Today 13.3. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/cyprus-and-ugarit/.
Want to learn more?
“Lift the mountain on your hands,” or How to Cross a Netherworld Border
Person, Place, and Object: Ritual Healing in Roman and Late Antique Palestine
Post a comment