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

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Ugaritic <strong>Primer</strong>
Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani and Other
Places (2nd edition; ALASP 8; Münster: UgaritVerlag, 1995); this
is a translation of the German original from which it gets the
abbreviation KTU. 19 This volume categorizes the texts according to
genre (e.g., KTU 1 are literary texts, KTU 4 are administrative texts,
KTU 5 are school texts). In this system, some texts can have more
than one RS number, indicating that the text has been reconstructed
from more than one fragment. Thus, KTU 1.4, which is a part of
the Baal Cycle, has the following RS numbers: 2.008, 3.341, and
3.347. A convenient electronic edition of Ugaritic texts that follows
the KTU numbering has been edited by J.-L. Cunchillos, J.-P. Vita,
and J.-A. Zamora, Ugaritic Databank (Madrid, 2003); this is
available as a PDF file over the Internet at
http://www.labherm.filol.csic.es/ and uses the abbreviation UDB.
The numberings of UDB and KTU are largely identical, but UDB is
more complete. Digital images of the Ugaritic tablets are available
from Inscriptifact (http://www.inscriptifact.com/), an image
database of inscriptions compiled by West Semitic Research.
1.6.1 School Texts (Chapter 2)
A variety of school texts, including abecedaries (i.e., “alphabet
tablets”), god lists, polyglot lexical lists, and a variety of scribal
exercises were discovered at Ugarit. These texts testify to the
vigorous scribal culture. We will utilize a couple of these texts to
introduce the alphabet, but the school texts also underscore the
scribal training in the Akkadian cuneiform language and script.
1.6.2 Letters (Chapter 3)
In this primer, the Ugaritic language is introduced with letters
because letters offer beginning students an easier path into the
study of Ugaritic. As Simon Parker pointed out long ago, 20 the
19 Occasionally in English publications scholars use the abbreviations CTU or
CAT to abbreviate the English publication, Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from
Ugarit, but KTU is the most common abbreviation and thus is employed
herein.
20 Parker, “Studies in the Grammar of the Ugaritic Prose Texts” (Ph. D. diss.,
Johns Hopkins, 1967); also see “Some Methodological Principles in Ugaritic
Philology,” MAARAV 2 (1980), 7–42.