Ugaritic language

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Ugaritic language

The Ugaritic language, discovered by French

France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
archaeologists

Archaeology

Archaeology, archeology, or arch?ology is the science that studies Homo cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, Artifact , features, Biofact s, and cultural landscape....
in 1928, is known only in the form of writings found in the lost city of Ugarit

Ugarit

Ugarit was an ancient cosmopolitan port city, sited on the Mediterranean coast. Ugarit sent tribute to Ancient Egypt and maintained trade and diplomatic connections with Cyprus , documented in the archives recovered from the site and corroborated by Mycenaean Greece and Cypriot pottery found there....
, near the modern village of Ras Shamra, Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is an Arab-majority country in Southwest Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Israel to the southwest, Jordan to the south, Iraq to the east, and Turkey to the north....
. It has been extremely important for scholars of the Old Testament

Old Testament

In Western Christianity, the Old Testament refers to the books that form the first of the two-part Christianity Bible Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions....
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".

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Ugaritic language'

Start a new discussion about 'Ugaritic language'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

The Ugaritic language, discovered by French

France

Archaeology

Ugarit

Syria

Old Testament

Legend of Keret

The Legend of Keret, also known as the Epic of King Keret, is an ancient Ugaritic epic poetry, dated to Late Bronze Age, circa 1500 – 1200 Anno Domini....
, 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

Baal cycle

The Baal cycle was an Ugarit cycle of stories about the Canaan god Baal, also known as Hadad the god of storm and fertility. They were written in Ugaritic language, a language written in a Cuneiform script alphabet, on a series of Clay tablet found in the 1920s in the Tell of Ugarit, situated on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria, a fe...
— all revealing a Canaan

Canaan

Canaan is an ancient term for a region encompassing modern-day Israel and Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, plus adjoining coastal lands and parts of Jordan, Syria and northeastern Egypt....
ite mythology.

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

Writing System

The Ugaritic alphabet

Ugaritic alphabet

The Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform abjad , used from around 1500 BCE for the Ugaritic language, an extinct Northwest Semitic languages discovered in Ugarit, Syria, in 1928....
is a cuneiform

Cuneiform

Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot...
abjad

Abjad

An abjad is a type of writing system in which each symbol stands for a consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate vowel. It is a term suggested by Peter T....
(alphabet without vowels), used from around 15th century BCE. Although it appears similar to Mesopotamian cuneiform, it was unrelated (see Ugaritic alphabet

Ugaritic alphabet

The Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform abjad , used from around 1500 BCE for the Ugaritic language, an extinct Northwest Semitic languages discovered in Ugarit, Syria, in 1928....
). 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

Hurrian language

Hurrian is a conventional name for the language of the Hurrians , a people who entered northern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC and had mostly vanished by 1000 BC....
) were occasionally written in it in the Ugarit area, although not elsewhere.

Clay tablet

Clay tablet

In ancient times, small tablets made out of clay were used as a writing medium.From the 4th millennium BCE in the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian and Hittites civilisations of the Mesopotamia region, Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed....
s 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

Hebrew alphabet

The Hebrew alphabet consists of 22 letters used for writing the Hebrew language. Five of these letters have a different form when appearing as the last letter in a word....
, Greek

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
, and Latin

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
alphabets. The script was written from left to right.

Phonology

Ugaritic has 28 consonantal phonemes, including two semivowels. And eight vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
phonemes (three short vowels and five long vowels): a a i i u u e o. (e and o only occur as long vowels and are the result of monophthongization of the diphthongs “ay” and “aw” respectively, as in many of today's Arabic dialects

Varieties of Arabic

The Arabic language is a Semitic language with many Variety that diverge widely from one another?both from country to country and within a single country....
).

**Ugaritic consonantal phonemes**
		Interdental	Dental/Alveolar Dental consonant In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages....
		Interdental	plain	emphatic
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
Stop Stop consonant A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms....	voiceless
	voiced
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German language , the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue ag...	voiceless
	voiced
Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr > as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular trill....
Approximant

The voiced palato-alveolar fricative ? 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 Arabic language Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....	Tiberian Hebrew
		?	??
		?	??
		?	?
		?	??
		?	?
		?	??
		?	??
		?	?
		?	??
		?	?
		?	?
		?	?
		?	?
		?	??
		?	?
		?	??
		?	??
		?	?
		?	?
		?	?
		?	?
		?	?
		?	?
		?	?
		?	?
		?	?
		?	?
		?	?
		?	?
Proto-Semitic	Ugaritic	Arabic Arabic language Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....	Tiberian Hebrew

Sometimes Ugaritic g [?] corresponds to Proto-Semitic ?´ [??].

Grammar

Ugaritic is an inflected language, and as a Semitic language its grammatical features are highly similar to those found in Classical Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
and Akkadian

Akkadian

Akkadian may refer to:*Akkadian language*City of Akkad or Agad*Akkadian Empire*Sargon of Akkad*The Amarna letters...
. It possesses two genders (masculine and feminine), three cases

Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject , of direct object, or of possession ....
for nouns and adjectives (nominative, accusative, and genitive); three numbers: (singular, dual, and plural); and verb aspects

Grammatical aspect

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state. In English, for example, the past-tense sentences "I swam" and "I was swimming" differ in aspect ....
similar to those found in Western Semitic languages

West Semitic languages

The West Semitic languages are a proposed major sub-grouping of Semitic languages. One widely accepted analysis, supported by semiticists like Robert Hetzron and John Huehnergard, divides the Semitic language family into two branches: East Semitic languages and Western....
. The word order for Ugaritic is Verb

Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
Subject

Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituent every sentence can be divided into, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle....
Object

Object (grammar)

An object in grammar is a sentence element and part of the sentence Predicate . It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb....
(VSO), possessed–possessor

Possession (linguistics)

Possession, in the context of linguistics, is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which possession the referent of the other....
(NG), and noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open class lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition....
–adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntax role is to grammatical modifier a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's definition....
(NA). Ugaritic is considered a conservative Semitic language, since it retains most of the Proto-Semitic phonemes, the case

Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject , of direct object, or of possession ....
system and the word order of the Proto-Semitic ancestor.

External links

(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.)
(Quartz Hill School of Theology)
by Michael Heiser, Ph.D.

Ugaritic language

Writing System

Phonology

Grammar

See also

External links