Cuneiform Tablets

The alphabet was one of the most important inventions in the history of mankind. It replaced unwieldy memorization of thousands of pictures or hundreds of syllabic signs with an easy-to-learn sequence of approximately 30 letters, which could be combined into thousands of words. About the middle of the 14th century B.C., scribes at Ugarit, perhaps influenced by a knowledge of the earlier Canaanite linear alphabet, invented the cuneiform alphabet. Although the Ugaritic alphabet is thus not the first, it is the oldest alphabet in which a significant number of texts are extant.