Ugarit's name comes from a Phoenician word meaning shelter. Neolithic remains were found at the base of the tell (hill), dating from the seventh millennium! After a period of renewed uncertainty coinciding with the Hyksos invasion of Egypt, Ugarit flourished once again in the Late Bronze Age (after 1600) in cooperation with the XVIII dynasty in Egypt. The subsequent golden age of late 14-13 century BC accounts for much of the building achievements now visible when the city benefited most directly from the Egyptian-Mitannian peace.
The warehouses were overflowing and one of the earliest alphabets greatly simplified record taking and accounting; thirty cuneiform symbols based on "one sound, one sign", constituted a much simpler method of recording language than the unwieldy pictogram-based cuneiform. At the 13th century BC, the city was building up links with the Aegean, a two-way exchange that probably brought the Ugarit alphabet to Greece. The secondary effects of the population movements of 1200 BC touched off by the invasion of the "Sea Peoples" probably accounts for the destruction of the city's palace-based economy.