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Ugaritic
Spoken in:	ancient Ugarit
Language extinction:	twelfth century BC
Language family:	Afro-Asiatic  Semitic   West Semitic    Central Semitic     Northwest Semitic      Ugaritic
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	uga
ISO 639-3:	uga
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Ugaritic language, discovered by French archaeologists in 1928, is known only in the form of writings found in the lost city of Ugarit, near the modern village of Ras Shamra, Syria. It has been extremely important for scholars of the Old Testament in clarifying Biblical Hebrew texts and has revealed more of the way in which ancient Israelite culture finds parallels in the neighboring cultures.

Ugaritic was "the greatest literary discovery from antiquity since the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform¹". 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 a Canaanite mythology.

The Ugaritic language is attested in texts from the 14th through the 12th century BC.² The city was destroyed in 1180/70 BC.

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

Writing System

Main article: Ugaritic alphabet

The Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform abjad (alphabet without vowels), used from around 15th century BCE. To the casual observer, it appears similar to Mesopotamian cuneiform, but 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. (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	kˁ		ʔ
	voiced	b		d		g	g
Fricative	voiceless		θ	s	sˤ	ʃ	x		ħ	h
	voiced		ð	z	ðˤ	ʒ*	ɣ		ʕ
Trill				r
Approximant				l		j	w

^* The voiced palato-alveolar fricative ʒ occurs as a late variant of the voiced interdental ð.

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]
ẓ [ðˁ]	ẓ [ðˁ]	ظ	ẓ [ðˁ]	צ	ṣ [sˁ]
d	d	د	d	דּ	d
t	t	ت	t	תּ	t
ṭ [tˁ]	ṭ [tˁ]	ط	ṭ [tˁ]	ט	ṭ [tˁ]
š [ʃ]	š [ʃ]	س	s	שׁ	š [ʃ]
z	z	ز	z	ז	z
s	s	س	s	ס	s
ṣ [sˁ]	ṣ [sˁ]	ص	ṣ [sˁ]	צ	ṣ [sˁ]
l	l	ل	l	ל	l
ś [ɬ]	š [ʃ]	ش	š [ʃ]	שׂ	s
ṣ́ [ɬˁ]	ṣ [sˁ]	ض	ḍ [ɮˁ]→[dˁ]	צ	ṣ [sˁ]
g [ɡ]	g	ج	ǧ [ɡʲ]→[ʤ]	גּ	g
k	k	ك	k	כּ	k
q [kˁ]	q [kˁ]	ق	q [kˁ]	ק	q [kˁ]
ġ [ɣ]	ġ [ɣ]*	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

^* Sometimes Ugaritic ġ [ɣ] corresponds to Proto-Semitic ṣ́ [ɬˁ].

Grammar

Main article: Ugaritic 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 Western 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

• Gordon, Cyrus Herzl (1965). The Ancient Near East, W.W. Norton & Company Press. ISBN 0-393-00275-6. .
• 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.
• 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. 
• 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).
• J. Tropper, Ugartische Grammatik, AOAT 273, Münster, Ugarit Verlag, 2000. Online Review of Tropper 2000 by Dennis Pardee. A more concise grammar: Sivan, Daniel (1997). A Grammar of the Ugaritic Language (Handbook of Oriental Studies/Handbuch Der Orientalistik), Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-10614-6. .
• J-L. Cunchillos and Juan-Pablo Vita, A Concordance of Ugaritic Words Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2003. ISBN 1-59333-258-0. Also available from Logos Bible Software
• Stanislav Segert (1997). A Basic Grammar of the Ugaritic Language, University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03999-8. 
• Sabatino Moscati (1980). An Introduction to Comparative Grammar of Semitic Languages Phonology and Morphology, Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 3-447-00689-7. 

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 below); 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.

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 16 November 2008, at 13:32.

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