Tales from all around

In the beginning was the word...and the word was born in Ugarit.

This very spot in Syria witnessed the birth of the first alphabet in history. This land, nowadays suffering the brutality of war, was once described by a historian as "the land every cultured man belongs to".


I fell in love with archeology so early, and it was there. I was a kid when my father introduced to me that stone tablet he had just bought from a souvenir kiosk in Ugarit.
"At first man used drawings to express himself before he invented this smart way of coding words by what we call now letters". My father explained eagerly.
It was a rectangular clay tablet stone in the size of my hand fist, carved with thirty wedge-like signs; the first letters man has ever written and uttered; the origin of languages!
"Wow, this should have cost a fortune to buy" I thought to myself...


I clenched my fist tightly on it as if I was holding a gem, and I clung to my father while walking down that hill. The site was only a stone throw away from the Mediterranean but it held a mysterious calmness. It seemed like a maze of stone walls half buried in ground. Helplessly scattered on that hill, one can barely believe the great contribution this lost city had made to mankind. Not only the first Alphabet, but also the oldest music script in the world, about 3400 years old!


For a couple of years after that, this stone was a great source of pride for me to tell my friends about...until one day I showed it to my history teacher.
"It is a replica of the real one. Human heritage cannot be sold to anyone, it is a treasure that belongs to all nations".
She made it crystal clear; I had a fake stone! This was even worse than when I discovered that Santa was not real.


Years passed and my worthless fake stone was lost, but its twin real masterpiece is still there in the Syrian museum. Today, this precious stone lays helpless with other stones and treasures waiting their unknown destiny in a land torn by civil war. The land that once has embraced diverse cultures and beliefs is now in the hands of extremism which destroyed valuable archeological sites in the area, while the world stood helpless.
Will my stone survive and make it safely to a new peaceful era? Nobody knows. But I wish I can live long to see humanity waking up again to realize that it is its heritage and civilization that must be cherished and valued the most.