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| The excavations at Ras Shamra, the modern site of ancient Ugarit, have yielded over two thousand texts and fragments bearing the cuneiform script. One variety of cuneiform, so far attested in around 1100 published texts, is an indigenous, alphabetic writing system used almost exclusively to record the local Northwest Semitic language, Ugaritic. The other variety of cuneiform, found in approximately 960 published texts and fragments, is the syllabic-logographic script native to Mesopotamia and for the most part represents the Akkadian language, although other languages are also attested in this script at Ugarit: 70 lexical and literary texts in Sumerian; 30 literary texts and one letter in Hurrian; one text in Hittite; one text in Ugaritic. Of concern to us here are the syllabic texts written in Akkadian, of which we have the following genres of texts: economic, legal, letters, lexical, and literary. | The excavations at Ras Shamra, the modern site of ancient Ugarit, have yielded over two thousand texts and fragments bearing the cuneiform script. One variety of cuneiform, so far attested in around 1100 published texts, is an indigenous, alphabetic writing system used almost exclusively to record the local Northwest Semitic language, Ugaritic. The other variety of cuneiform, found in approximately 960 published texts and fragments, is the syllabic-logographic script native to Mesopotamia and for the most part represents the Akkadian language, although other languages are also attested in this script at Ugarit: 70 lexical and literary texts in Sumerian; 30 literary texts and one letter in Hurrian; one text in Hittite; one text in Ugaritic. Of concern to us here are the syllabic texts written in Akkadian, of which we have the following genres of texts: economic, legal, letters, lexical, and literary. |
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| ==== The Writing System ==== | ====== The Writing System ====== |
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| The alphabetic cuneiform writing system invented at Ugarit is written from left to right, like the cuneiform script of Mesopotamia, and is comprised of thirty signs that are composed of three different types of wedges: horizontal 𒀸, vertical 𒁹, and angled 𒌋 (also called a //Winkelhaken//), and a word divider sign that is a smaller version of the vertical wedge 𒑰. The native Mesopotamian cuneiform writing system uses an additional two wedges in its repertoire: the downward diagonal wedge 𒀹 , and the upward diagonal wedge 𒀺. | The alphabetic cuneiform writing system invented at Ugarit is written from left to right, like the cuneiform script of Mesopotamia, and is comprised of thirty signs that are composed of three different types of wedges: horizontal 𒀸, vertical 𒁹, and angled 𒌋 (also called a //Winkelhaken//), and a word divider sign that is a smaller version of the vertical wedge 𒑰. The native Mesopotamian cuneiform writing system uses an additional two wedges in its repertoire: the downward diagonal wedge 𒀹 , and the upward diagonal wedge 𒀺. |
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| ͗a b g ḫ d h w z ḥ ṭ y k š l m ḏ n ẓ s ͑ p ṣ q r ṯ ǵ t ͗i ͗u ś | ͗a b g ḫ d h w z ḥ ṭ y k š l m ḏ n ẓ s ͑ p ṣ q r ṯ ǵ t ͗i ͗u ś |
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| The last letter, ś, is rare and usually only occurs in loanwords (such as śśw from Indo-European ‘horse’) but can also interchange with s. It has been posited that ś represents s plus long or short /u/, in other words su or sū (Huehnergard 2002, 1). Another theory is that ś represents the evolution of the phoneme s, corresponding to Hebrew samekh, where the former expressed an affricate when the later had become, or was in the process of becoming, a fricative (Pardee 2007, 183; cf. Tropper 1995, 505-528). | The last letter, ś, is rare and usually only occurs in loanwords (such as śśw from Indo-European ‘horse’) but can also interchange with s. It has been posited that ś represents s plus long or short /u/, in other words su or sū (Huehnergard 2002, 1). Another theory is that ś represents the evolution of the phoneme s, corresponding to Hebrew samekh, where the former expressed an affricate when the later had become, or was in the process of becoming, a fricative (Pardee 2007, 183; Tropper 1995, 505-528). |
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| There are three signs that represent the glottal stop, or ‘aleph,’ and each is differentiated depending on the quality of the vowel that follows it; the vowel length, however, is irrelevant. Apart from the alephs, the Ugaritic writing system is devoid of vowels (except for a few cases in letters where y represents /ī/). It is possible that the variants of the glottal stop were introduced in order to write other languages, such as Akkadian or Hurrian, in which syllables can being with vowels, a phenomenon that does not occur in the ancient West Semitic languages (Pardee 2007, 183). | There are three signs that represent the glottal stop, or ‘aleph,’ and each is differentiated depending on the quality of the vowel that follows it; the vowel length, however, is irrelevant. Apart from the alephs, the Ugaritic writing system is devoid of vowels (except for a few cases in letters where y represents /ī/). It is possible that the variants of the glottal stop were introduced in order to write other languages, such as Akkadian or Hurrian, in which syllables can being with vowels, a phenomenon that does not occur in the ancient West Semitic languages (Pardee 2007, 183). |
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| Tropper, J. 1995. “Die letzte Zeichen des ugaritischen Alphabets.” //Ugarit-Forschungen// 27: 505-528. | Tropper, J. 1995. “Die letzte Zeichen des ugaritischen Alphabets.” //Ugarit-Forschungen// 27: 505-528. |
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| | Tropper, J. 2000. //Ugaritische Grammatik.// AOAT 273. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. |
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| Walker, C.B.F. 1990. "Cuneiform." //Reading the Past: Ancient Writing from Cuneiform to the Alphabet.// Comp. J. T. Hooker. Berkeley: University of California/British Museum. 17-73. | Walker, C.B.F. 1990. "Cuneiform." //Reading the Past: Ancient Writing from Cuneiform to the Alphabet.// Comp. J. T. Hooker. Berkeley: University of California/British Museum. 17-73. |
