One of the earliest solar eclipses recorded, the Ugarit Eclipse, darkened the sky for 2 minutes and 7 seconds on May 3, 1375 B.C., according to an analysis of a clay tablet discovered in 1948. However, a report in the journal Nature in 1989 suggested, in fact, the eclipse actually occurred on March 5, 1223 B.C. That new date was based on an historical dating of the tablet as well as an analysis of the tablet's text which mentions the visibility of the planet Mars during the eclipse.
Mesopotamian historians in Ugarit, a port city in Northern Syria, recount that the sun was "put to shame" during this total eclipse.