Introduction

The recent death of the eminent excavator of Ugarit, Claude F. A. Schaeffer, is an occasion both to remember this great French archaeologist and to revisit Ugarit (Ras Shamra) where Schaeffer spent more than 30 years of his professional life. In the articles that follow we will speak of Schaeffer the man (“Claude Frederic-Armand Schaeffer-Forrer (1898–1982): An Appreciation”); Ugarit, where he uncovered thousands of ancient cuneiform tablets as well as an ancient metropolis at the center of Canaanite culture (“The Tablets from Ugarit and Their Importance for Biblical Studies”); and, in the words of Schaeffer himself, the destruction of the city (“The Last Days of Ugarit”).