Ugaritic language

Ugaritic
Spoken in	ancient Ugarit
Extinct	twelfth century BC
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Northwest Semitic Ugaritic
Language codes
ISO 639-2	uga
ISO 639-3	uga
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

The Ugaritic language, a northwest Semitic language, discovered by French archaeologists in 1928, is known only in the form of writings found in the lost city of Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra), Syria.^[1] It has been used by scholars of the Old Testament to clarify Biblical Hebrew texts and has revealed ways in which ancient Israelite culture finds parallels in the neighboring cultures.^[1]

Ugaritic has been called "the greatest literary discovery from antiquity since the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform".^[2]

Contents 1 Corpus 2 Writing system 3 Phonology 4 Grammar 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 8 External links

Corpus

The Ugaritic language is attested in texts from the 14th through the 12th century BCE.^[3] The city was destroyed in 1180–1170 BCE.

Literary texts discovered at Ugarit include the Legend of Keret, the Aqhat Epic (or Legend of Danel), the Myth of Baal-Aliyan, and the Death of Baal — the latter two are also collectively known as the Baal cycle — all revealing aspects of a Canaanite religion.

According to one hypothesis, Ugaritic texts might solve the biblical puzzle of the anachronism of Ezekiel mentioning Daniel at Ezekiel 14:13-16; it is because in both Ugaritic and the Ancient Hebrew texts, it is correctly Danel.^[1]

Writing system

The Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform abjad (alphabet without vowels), used from around 15th century BCE. Although it appears similar to Mesopotamian cuneiform, it was unrelated (see Ugaritic alphabet). It is the oldest example of the family of West Semitic scripts that were used for Phoenician, Hebrew, and Aramaic. The so-called long alphabet has 31 letters, while the short alphabet has 22. Other languages (particularly Hurrian) were occasionally written in it in the Ugarit area, although not elsewhere.

Clay tablets written in Ugaritic provide the earliest evidence of both the Levantine and South Semitic orders of the alphabet, which gave rise to the alphabetic orders of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets. The script was written from left to right.

Phonology

Ugaritic has 28 consonantal phonemes, including two semivowels, and eight vowel phonemes (three short vowels and five long vowels): a ā i ī u ū ē ō. (The phonemes ē and ō only occur as long vowels and are the result of monophthongization of the diphthongs “ay” and “aw” respectively.)

Ugaritic consonantal phonemes

		Labial	Interdental	Dental/Alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
				plain	emphatic
Nasal		m		n
Stop	voiceless	p		t	tˤ		k	q		ʔ
	voiced	b		d			ɡ
Fricative	voiceless		θ	s	sˤ	ʃ	x		ħ	h
	voiced		ð	z	ðˤ	ʒ[decimal 1]	ɣ[decimal 2]		ʕ
Trill				r
Approximant				l		j	w

The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Ugaritic, Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew:

Proto-Semitic	Ugaritic	Arabic		Tiberian Hebrew
b	b	ب	b	בּ	b
p	p	ف	f	פּ	p
ḏ [ð]	ḏ [ð]	ذ	ḏ [ð]	ז	z
ṯ [θ]	ṯ [θ]	ث	ṯ [θ]	שׁ	š [ʃ]
ṱ [θʼ]	ẓ [ðˤ]	ظ	ẓ [ðˤ]	צ	ṣ [sˤ]
d	d	د	d	דּ	d
t	t	ت	t	תּ	t
ṭ [tʼ]	ṭ [tˤ]	ط	ṭ [tˤ]	ט	ṭ [tˤ]
š [s]	š [ʃ]	س	s	שׁ	š [ʃ]
z [dz]	z	ز	z	ז	z
s [ts]	s	س	s	ס	s
ṣ [tsʼ]	ṣ [sˤ]	ص	ṣ [sˤ]	צ	ṣ [sˤ]
l	l	ل	l	ל	l
ś [ɬ]	š [ʃ]	ش	š [ʃ]	שׂ	ś/s [ɬ]→[s]
ṣ́ [(t)ɬʼ]	ṣ [sˤ]	ض	ḍ [ɮˤ]→[dˤ]	צ	ṣ [sˤ]
g [ɡ]	g	ج	ǧ [ɡʲ]→[d͡ʒ]	גּ	g
k	k	ك	k	כּ	k
q [kʼ]	q [kˤ]	ق	q [kˤ]	ק	q [kˤ]
ġ [ɣ]	ġ [ɣ][decimal 1]	غ	ġ [ɣ]	ע	ʻ [ʕ]
ḫ [x]	ḫ [x]	خ	ḫ [x]	ח	ḥ [ħ]
ʻ [ʕ]	ʻ [ʕ]	ع	ʻ [ʕ]	ע	ʻ [ʕ]
ḥ [ħ]	ḥ [ħ]	ح	ḥ [ħ]	ח	ḥ [ħ]
ʼ [ʔ]	ʼ [ʔ]	ء	ʼ [ʔ]	א	ʼ [ʔ]
h	h	ه	h	ה	h
m	m	م	m	מ	m
n	n	ن	n	נ	n
r	r	ر	r	ר	r
w	w	و	w	ו	w
y [j]	y [j]	ي	y [j]	י	y [j]
Proto-Semitic	Ugaritic	Arabic		Tiberian Hebrew

Grammar

Ugaritic is an inflected language, and as a Semitic language its grammatical features are highly similar to those found in Classical Arabic and Akkadian. It possesses two genders (masculine and feminine), three cases for nouns and adjectives (nominative, accusative, and genitive); three numbers: (singular, dual, and plural); and verb aspects similar to those found in other Northwest Semitic languages. The word order for Ugaritic is verb–subject–object (VSO), possessed–possessor (NG), and noun–adjective (NA). Ugaritic is considered a conservative Semitic language, since it retains most of the Proto-Semitic phonemes, the case system and the word order of the Proto-Semitic ancestor.

See also

• Ugarit
• Ugaritic grammar
• Ugaritic alphabet
• Northwest Semitic languages
• Central Semitic languages
• Semitic Languages
• Proto-Semitic language

Notes

References

• Bordreuil, Pierre. and Dennis Pardee. (2009). A Manual of Ugaritic: Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic 3. Winona Lake, IN 46590: Eisenbraun's, Inc. ISBN 1-5750-6153-8. 
• Cunchillos, J.-L., and Juan-Pablo Vita (2003). A Concordance of Ugaritic Words. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. ISBN 1-59333-258-0.  Also available from Logos Bible Software.
• del Olmo Lete, Gregorio; & Sanmartín, Joaquín (2004). A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-13694-0.  (2 vols), (originally in Spanish, translated by W. G. E. Watson).
• Gibson, John C. L. (1977). Canaanite Myths and Legends. T. & T. Clark. ISBN 0-567-02351-6.  This contains Latin-alphabet transliterations of the Ugaritic texts and facing translations in English.
• Gordon, Cyrus Herzl (1965). The Ancient Near East. W. W. Norton & Company Press. ISBN 0-393-00275-6. 
• Greenstein, Edward L. (1998). Shlomo Izre'el, Itamar Singer, Ran Zadok. ed. "On a New Grammar of Ugartic" in Past links: studies in the languages and cultures of the ancient near east: Volume 18 of Israel oriental studies. Eisenbrauns. ISBN 97-81575060354.  Found at Google Scholar.
• Moscati, Sabatino (1980). An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of Semitic Languages, Phonology and Morphology. Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 3-447-00689-7. 
• Parker, Simon B. (editor) (1997). Ugaritic Narrative Poetry: Writings from the Ancient World Society of Biblical Literature. Atlanta: Scholars Press. ISBN 0-7885-0337-5. 
• Pardee, Dennis (2003-2004)). Rezension von J. Tropper, Ugaritische Grammatik (AOAT 273) Ugarit-Verlag, Münster 2000: Internationale Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft vom Vorderen Orient. Vienna, Austria: Archiv für Orientforschung (AfO).  P. 1-100, p. 101-200, p. 201-300 p. 301-404.
• Segert, Stanislav (1997). A Basic Grammar of the Ugaritic Language. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03999-8. 
• Sivan, Daniel (1997). A Grammar of the Ugaritic Language (Handbook of Oriental Studies/Handbuch Der Orientalistik). Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-10614-6.  A more concise grammar.
• Tropper, J. (2000). Ugartische Grammatik, AOAT 273. Münster, Ugarit Verlag. 
• Woodard, Roger D. (editor) (2008). The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521684986. 

External links

• Ugarit and the Bible. An excerpt from an online introductory course on Ugaritic grammar (the Quartz Hill School of Theology's course noted in the links hereafter); includes a cursory discussion on the relationship between Ugaritic and Old Testament/Hebrew Bible literature.
• BBCi website: "El in the Ugaritic tablets" gives many attributes of the Ugaritic creator and his consort Athirat.
• Abstract of Mark Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Text.
• Introduction to Ugaritic Grammar (Quartz Hill School of Theology).
• Unicode Chart.
• What's Ugaritic Got to Do with Anything? by Michael Heiser, Ph.D.