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

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Ugaritic <strong>Primer</strong>
Ugaritic Cuneiform
Sumerian Cuneiform
Hurrian Cuneiform
Hittite Cuneiform
Egyptian Hieroglyphic
Hittite (Hittite) Hieroglyphic
Cypro–Minoan Cypro–Minoan Script
2.3 THE CLASSIFICATION OF UGARITIC
One of the most hotly debated questions in Ugaritic studies
concerns the classification of Ugaritic within the Semitic languages
(see §9.5.1). The discovery of Ugaritic, first of all, reenergized the
more general debate about the divisions of the Semitic languages.
The geographical groupings into Northeast Semitic (Akkadian),
Northwest Semitic (Ugaritic, Aramaic, Phoenician, Hebrew),
Southeast Semitic (Arabic), and Southwest Semitic (Ethiopic) has
found a cautious consensus. Several languages are still the subject
of some discussion including especially Amorite, Eblaite, and even
Ugaritic. Most scholars, however, group Ugaritic together with
Aramaic, Phoenician, and Hebrew though sometimes under
different names than Northwest Semitic. The Northwest Semitic
languages are further subdivided into Canaanite (e.g., Phoenician
and Hebrew) and Aramaic. It is again a hotly debated question
whether Ugaritic belongs to the Canaanite group or not. To begin
with, the differences between the Ugaritic and Canaanite languages
should be related to the chronological differences between Ugaritic
(fifteenth to thirteenth centuries BCE) and the main evidence for
the Canaanite group (tenth to fifth centuries BCE). This points to a
more fundamental difficulty in categorization schemes of the
Semitic languages that try to classify chronologically disparate
languages (e.g., Amorite and Arabic) without adequately addressing
these diachronic issues. Indeed, linguistic studies in dialect
geography also suggest that more attention needs to be given to
geographical issues like trade routes, coastal vs. inland, and urban
vs. rural. Thus, while the classification schemes may be convenient
organizational tools, they should be used with these caveats.