Ugaritic language
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The Ugaritic language is known to us only in the form of writings found in the lost city of Ugarit since its discovery by French archaeologists in 1928. It has been extremely important for scholars of the Old Testament in clarifying Hebrew texts and has revealed more of how Judaism used common phrases, literary idioms, and expressions employed by surrounding pagan cultures.
Ancient Near Eastern scholar Cyrus Gordon (The Ancient Near East, p. 99) assesses Ugaritic as "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", all revealing a Canaanite mythology.
Ugaritic is a Semitic language written in cuneiform that was adapted for use as an alphabet. This Ugaritic alphabet, among the oldest that has been discovered, is different from all other cuneiform writings insofar as it is an alphabet rather than a syllabary. It has 30 different letters. (See the Ugaritic alphabet for an illustration.) To the casual observer, it appears very similar in appearance to Akkadian or Assyrian writing.
Ugaritic was used by a Canaanite culture, and the use of the term 'Canaanite' to refer to the Ugaritic language is sometimes found. It is closely related to the Canaanite languages. However, from the perspective of linguistic taxonomy, it is not viewed as a Canaanite language; rather, it is a close relative of the proto-language from which the languages termed Canaanite descend, and was spoken at about the same time as that language.
One edition of the mythological texts is John Gibson's Canaanite Myths and Legends (2nd edition, T. & T. Clark: 1977, released again 2000) ISBN 0567023516. This contains Latin-letter transcriptions of the Ugartic texts and facing translations in English.
A much more affordable and up-to-date edition of many of the Ugaritic texts (including introductions, transcriptions, English translations, and notes) is the compilation edited by Simon B. Parker, Ugaritic Narrative Poetry (WAW 9; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997) ISBN 0788503375.
The most recent and also the most extensive dictionary of the Ugaritic language in English is: A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition (2 vols), by G. del Olmo Lete and J. Sanmartín (originally in Spanish, translated by W.G.E. Watson), published by Brill 2003.
See also
External links
- Kadash Kinahu: Complete Directory (Contains the complete version of the Ugaritic Ba‘al cycle&#nbsp;&#ndash; based on various translations&#nbsp;&#ndash; in frames mode and no frames mode. Search on "Ba`al".)
- Ugarit and the Bible(Discussion of the ways in which Ugaritic has illuminated the Old Testament.)
- 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.
he:אוגרית (שפה)
