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August 23, 2007
A Novel Approach to Ugarit
Jim Davila has the story at PaleoJudaica.
Of course, Jim is correct that the cuneiform alphabet used to write Ugaritic is not the "most direct antecedent of our own phonetic alphabet." It's not even an antecedent of our "phonetic alphabet" but a branch experiment in a style of alphabetic writing that went extinct in the 12th century BCE. In fact, I think there were two or three closely related experiments in writing an alphabet in a cuneiform script that all appeared around the same time and disappeared around the same time. See my series on the short cuneiform alphabet and if you only have time for a single post try my post on "The Beth Shemesh Tablet and The New South Semitic Abecedary from Ugarit." But of course, I think these are long alphabets if not the "Ugaritic alphabet;" so you might want to start with "An Inscribed Jar Handle from Sarepta in Lebanon." The cuneiform script on that jar handle is almost certainly a short alphabet. Not sure what a short or long alphabet is? Short alphabets have 22 letters or so. Long alphabets have more. The Ugaritic alphabet has 30 signs, depending on how you count, 27 or 28 of them are consonants and 2 or 3 are consonant-vowel syllables.
Posted by Duane Smith at August 23, 2007 7:20 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
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