Ugaritic language

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Ugaritic
Spoken in: ancient Ugarit
Language extinction: 12th 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 cuneiform". 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.

Ugaritic was a Northwest Semitic language written in cuneiform abjad (consonantal alphabet). 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.

The Ugaritic language is attested in texts from the 14th through the 12th century BC.[1] The city was destroyed in 1180/70 BC.

The Ugaritic texts provide an unparalleled glimpse into the life and religious worldview of the ancient Israelites. The vocabulary is amazingly close to biblical Hebrew — many Ugaritic words are letter-for-letter the same in both languages. It is the religion of Ugarit, however, that is especially important to Old Testament scholarship, since Ugaritic is the ancient language of one of Israel’s closest neighbors, the modern village of Ras Shamra, located in what is now Syria.

Contents

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Quartz Hill School of Theology, Ugarit and the Bible

[edit] References

  • General: Gordon, Cyrus Herzl (1965). The Ancient Near East. W.W. Norton & Company Press. ISBN 0-393-00275-6.  at p. 99.
  • Text edition of mythological texts: 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.
  • Text Edition: (including introductions, transcriptions, English translations, and notes) is 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. 
  • Lexica: 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).
  • Grammars: 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. .
  • Concordance: 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

[edit] See also

Ancient Near East Portal

[edit] External links