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

Letters 47
3.3.2 Transcription, Vocalization, and Notes (KTU 2.10)
2.10:1 thm.}iwrdr
/tahmu }iwridarri/
Message of }Iwridarri.
In this Type II Heading the first word, on the basis of parallel
features of Akkadian letters, thm, is a noun and part of the
Heading. Unlike Hebrew, Ugaritic used case ending vowels to
indicate a noun’s function in a sentence. Since thm is part of a title,
it is in the nominative, the case for subjects, vocatives, and titles. 7
In our view, a final /-u/ marks this vocative. Since we have
construed thm as a title for this communiqué, and not as the direct
object of the verb rgm in line 3, we have indicated the appropriate
case, the nominative. thm is bound to, or in close relationship to, a
following word, a personal name. This personal name limits the
concept of the message by indicating that of all the possible
messages, this one “belongs to” }Iwridarri. Ugaritic retained the
use of case vowels in both freestanding and bound forms of the
noun. Generally speaking, the case vowel for the noun to which
another is bound is /-i/. We have indicated this on the PN,
}Iwridarri, though it is not certain that PNs were consistently
inflected diptotically (two cases) or triptotically (three cases).
You will notice that we have supplied “vowels.” You may be
asking, how did they get them? Though it may not be apparent at
first glance, there is evidence for reconstructing the vowels in
7 For discussion of the vocative, see Tropper, Ugaritische Grammatik, §54.2.
E. Greenstein suggests, on the basis of KTU 1.17, I 23–24, ltbrknn ltr ilaby //
tmrnn lbny bnwt, that the vocative takes the genitive case, at least when
preceded by l (see Greenstein, “On a New Grammar of Ugaritic,” IOS 18
(1979), 414). Despite the genitive form aby, itisnot certain that one should
generalize to all vocative forms. This suggestion also seems to assume that the
vocative particle behaves identically to the preposition l-. Itseems, rather, that
the vocative mark would be similar to the Akkadian luœ.