A. Alt was writing before the discovery of the Ugaritic texts had led to a complete reappraisal of the nature of the god El, and was able, in the fashion of the time, to dismiss the various El-forms ...

Dated to the 14th or early 13th century B.C.E., the text resembled inscriptions found in Ugarit, a coastal city-state in today's Syria, which developed just such a cuneiform alphabetic script ...