A Primer on Ugaritic: Language, Culture, and Literature - enenuru

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Ugaritic <strong>Primer</strong>
with the correct text written by the teacher and the practice of a
student below separated by a line (e.g., KTU 5.20). There are
several myths that are apparently written by a student as a
practice text (e.g., KTU 1.9, 1.13), and there are Akkadian texts
written in the Ugaritic alphabetic script, apparently as scribal
practice (e.g., KTU 1.67, 1.69, 1.70, 1.73).
2.5.1 The Origins of the Cuneiform Alphabet
An alphabet was invented in Egypt as part of the hieroglyphic
system of writing. We now know from the inscriptions at wadi
el–Hol in Egypt that the Egyptian alphabet was adapted for use
with Semitic writing systems as early as 2000 BCE. This first,
strictly alphabetic system of writing was pictographic. Thus, in the
proto–Sinaitic inscriptions, the Hebrew letter aleph corresponds to
the picture a (representing an ox’s head), the letter mem to m
(representing water), the letter nun to n (representing a snake),
and the letter resh to r (representing a head). Under the influence
of the cuneiform world that used Akkadian as a lingua franca in the
Levant during most of the second millennium BCE, the scribes in
Ugarit apparently adapted this pictographic alphabet into the
alphabetic cuneiform used for the Ugaritic language. Many of the
alphabetic cuneiform letters you will see in the following bear some
resemblance to the early Canaanite letters (compare the letter beth,
b and b, orthe letter ‘ayin, o and o), but others bear little
resemblance. 1 The Ugaritians were apparently quite proud of their
invention of a cuneiform alphabet. Of the seventeen archives at
Ugarit, at least six of them contained abecedaries—more than any
other ancient Near Eastern site (so far as we know).
2.5.2 An Abecedary (“Alphabet”) Tablet
The tablet on the next page, called an Abecedary, or“Alphabet”
tablet, will serve to introduce the Ugaritic alphabet. At least sixteen
abecedaries were found in six separate archives at Ugarit (see KTU
1 On the Ugaritic script, see Dietrich and Loretz “The Ugaritic Script,” in HUS,
81–89, and R. Stieglitz, “The Ugaritic Cuneiform and Canaanite Linear
Alphabets,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 30 (1971), 135–39.