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

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Ugaritic <strong>Primer</strong>
3.4.2 Transcription, Vocalization, and Notes (KTU 2.11)
Two male writers have sent this letter to a female superior. You
will notice immediately that the writers of this letter composed this
missive in a different style from KTU 2.10: According to our
schema at the beginning of this chapter, KTU 2.11 has a Type I
heading, which is used when someone sends a letter to a superior
party.
2.11:1–2 l}umy.}adtny rgm
/le-}ummiya }adaœttiniyaœ rugum/
To my Mother, our Lady, speak!
Line 1
l. On the basis of the lexical lists, we know that the vocalization
of the preposition l- should be /le-/. It seems that the /i/ class vowel
is shaded to a /e/ pronunciation when it occurs in the vicinity of
one of the sonorant consonants /l, m, n, r, y/. 31
}umy. The word }um, “mother,” is in the genitive with the 1cs
pronominal suffix -y. This is a singular suffix even though there
are two senders, so that we might have expected a dual /-niyaœ/ ora
plural /-ni/ or /-na/ (see Figure 3.9 above or see §7.3.1.3). The
scribe may simply have omitted the letter n that would have clearly
indicated the plural or dual writers of the letter. It may also be that
this is a frozen expression using the 1cs.
}adtny. This term and its suffix, “our lady,” stands in apposition
to the initial address. In this case it will be in the same case,
genitive, as the noun it complements. The word may be familiar to
you in the masculine form in Biblical Hebrew, Nwda. You will
notice several things in this word. First, the vowel after the d in
Hebrew is a long oœ sound, in contrast to the long aœ of the Ugaritic
word. This shift from long aœ in Ugaritic (also Akkadian) to long oœ
in Hebrew and the other Canaanite languages is known as “the
31 Huehnergard, Ugaritic Vocabulary, 53. Segert (BGUL, §82.1) lengthens the
vowel of the preposition, but it is not clear why would this happen.