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

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Ugaritic <strong>Primer</strong>
KTU 3.4 Iwrkl ransoms some captives
KTU 3.9 SÁmmn establishes a marzih˙u
1.6.5 Literary and Religious Texts (Chapter 6)
The publication of the Ugaritic alphabetic texts by Dietrich,
Loretz, and Sanmartín groups a rather diverse group of texts under
the rubric of religious and literary texts (= KTU 1). It includes the
three major epic literary texts as well as a variety of shorter or
fragmentary myths. This broad category also includes ritual texts.
Where the religious myths give some insight into the theology at
Ugarit, ritual texts give insight into religious practices. 21 Various
types of sacrifice form the heart of ritual texts. Blood is often an
important component of rituals, but there are also bloodless rituals.
Ritual texts include liturgies with invocations, recitations, or
prayers as well as divination texts, oracles, and expiation rites. The
ritual texts are mostly written in a chancellery or formal style and
language (like administrative or economic texts).
The literary texts have attracted the most attention, especially
for their parallels to the poetic literature of the Hebrew Bible. The
student should recognize, however, that these parallels really
testify more generally to Semitic literary tradition and Near Eastern
scribal conventions. These literary traditions and scribal
conventions, which continued into the Iron Age and biblical
literature, may be richly illustrated in Ugaritic literature. These
rhetorical forms often also have parallels in Akkadian, suggesting
their generic Semitic origin rather than specifically Canaanite.
Parallelism is a common feature of Ugaritic and Hebrew poetry.
It is perhaps the most often cited example of a common literary
tradition. This parallelism is expressed in several distinct rhetorical
forms. A typical example from Psalms and the Ugaritic poem of
El’s feast provides a good illustration:
The ocean sounds, O LORD,
The ocean sounds its thunder,
21 See P. Merlo and P. Xella, “The Ugaritic Cultic Texts,” in HUS, 289–304.