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

School Texts 35
Figure 2.1. Ugaritic Abecedary Tablet (KTU 5.6; image used by
permission of Yves Calvet, Director, Mission de Ras Shamra-
Ougarit)
5.4–6; 5.8–9; 5.12–14; 5.16–17; 5.19–21; 5.24–25). The Ugaritic
cuneiform alphabet contained thirty letters, which usually appear
in the order of the following school text (Figure 2.1):
a b g d H w z † y k l
}a b g h˙ d h w z h t y k sû l
m n S o p q r i
m d n z s { p s q r t
t e u c
gí t }i }u sì
You may notice a couple of things. First, the Ugaritic language was
written left to right (like Akkadian and in contrast to Hebrew and
Phoenician). 2 Second, the order of the letters approximates the
2 Dietrich and Loretz argued for another, shorter alphabet written right to left,
which was based on their reading of the alphabetic cuneiform text from Beth-
Shemesh and was also known at Ugarit (KTU 1.77; 4.31; 4.710); see Die
Keilalphabete and their summary in “The Ugaritic Script,” 82–85. The