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August 12, 2005
(ayin Blogging
It's stuff like this that gave me the reputation of having abnormal interests. Unless you, too, have abnormal interests go to the punch line in the last sentence of this post but before the notes.
I've been doing some research into the origins of the two (?) alphabets that are written in cuneiform. There is a long one of 30 signs representing 28 consonants (the aleph has three signs that also represent an associated vowel) and a short one of around 22 consonants like Hebrew. I say "around" because there is some room for discussion. Most, but not all, of the texts in the long alphabet are in the Ugaritic language. Texts in the Hurrian language are also written in this long alphabet. The short alphabet is more problematic. Some texts seem to be an old version of Phoenician (an inscribed jar handle from Sarepta in Lebanon and an inscribed bronze blade from the Nahal Tabor in Israel are possible examples).1 The tablet from Beth Shemesh may well represent Old South Arabic. It appears to give the alphabet in the hlح (sorry, I can't seem to make a h with a dot under it for the life of me) order rather than the `bg order.2
I have a hunch about how these two alphabets came about. But supporting or eliminating my hunch has proven very difficult. To avoid embarrassing myself prematurely, I will only say that I am taking a somewhat different direction from the current discussion of this issue.3 If I ever sort this out I will try to post it. There is even a difficult problem in posting because of the need to represent various uncommon fonts, Ugaritic for example. I am using graphic images here.
I was looking for literature on a couple of the signs in the long alphabet, the 
in particulate, when I ran across an interesting article on the Ugaritic (ayin by Wayne Pitard.4 I wish there were such studies on all the signs. Pitard notes that the Uparitic (ayin is normally transcribed in the same manner as the Sumero-Akkadian U, 
, sometimes called the "Winkelhaken" but that very few, if any, of the actual (ayins look like the Winkelhaken. He indicates three forms of the sign. The following is abstracted from his Figure 1.
| Type A (KTU 1.14,iii) |
Type B (KTU 1.q144i) |
Type A (KTU 1.43) |
|
|
|
Notice that none of these has the same orientation as the Winkelhaken. What he calls Type A comes from the hand of the well-known Ugaritic scribe Ilimilku.
So I thought I'd take a look at the (ayins in the short alphabet texts I am studying. In some of these texts, one needs to make an allowance for direction of writing. Taking that into account, and relying for the most part on Emile Puech's transcriptions5 I find the following:
- CTA 187 - the (ayin is closest to Pitard's Type B
- CTA 207 - the (ayin is closest to Type B
- RS 22.03 - the (ayin appears closest to Type B
- The jar handle from Sarepta(?) - the (ayin is more like the "Winkelhaken"
- TT 433 from Ta'anak - the (ayin is more like the "Winkelhaken"
- The Bronze blade from the Tabor valley - the (ayin appears closest to Type B
- The tablet from Beth Shemesh - no obvious (ayin.
One of the things I learned from Puech is that I need to look at the photos of the texts. The only one I have at hand is the Beth Shemesh tablet and it does not appear to contain an (ayin. So back to the library.
How does this help support or eliminate my hunch? I'm not sure as yet. In fact, it may have no bearing on it. The real point is that one must do a lot of grubbing around in the details if one wants to make a point on the larger issues.
Notes:
1) Dietrich and Loretz, "The Cuneiform Alphabets from Ugarit," UF, 21, 1998, 101-112
2) Benjamin Sass, "The Beth Shemesh Tablet and the Early History of the Proto-Canaanite, Cuneiform and South Semitic Alphabets," UF, 23, 1991, 315-326
3) Dietrich and Loretz, "The Cuneiform Alphabets from Ugarit," UF, 21, 1998, 101-112 and Die Keilalphabete. Die phönizisch-kanaanäischen und altarabischen Alphabete in Ugarit, Abandlungen zur Literatur Alt-Syrien-Palästinas 1. Münster, 1988 argues that the more or less prevailing "reduction" view is wrong while Benjamin Sass, "The Beth Shemesh Tablet and the Early History of the Proto-Canaanite, Cuneiform and South Semitic Alphabets," UF, 23, 1991, 315-326 supports the "reduction" view and further develops reductionist themes he expressed in The Genesis of the Alphabet and its Development in the Second Millennium B.C., Ägypten und Altes Testament 13, Wiesbaden, 1988 and Studia Aplhabetitica: On the Origin and Early History of the Northwest Semitic, South Semitic and Greek Alphabets, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 102, Fribourg and Göttingen, 1991. See also the abstract of a paper by Seth Sanders given at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research for still another approach to this debate. Also of importance in this discussion is Segert, Stanislav, Die Keilalphabete: Die phonizischkanaanaischen und altarabischen Alphabete in Ugarit, The Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1993.
4) Pitard, Wayne T., "The Shape of the (ayin in the Ugaritic Script," JNES 51, 4, (1992), 261-277.
5) Puech, Emile, "Origine de l'alphabet", Révue Biblique, 93, 2 (1986), 161-213
Posted by Duane Smith at August 12, 2005 4:24 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
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