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December 22, 2007
What to Do?
I've been working on an idea involving literacy at Ugarit. Specifically, I'm looking at three tablets that may have been written by semi-literates or literate elites rather than by professional scribes or their active students. There may be more than three such tablets but I'm starting with just these three. These three texts are easy enough to understand in outline. Two are broken, one badly broken, in important places. Each has a weird vocabulary item or two and maybe some weird grammar. Two have small issues concerning their reading. At least one tablet may have two "spelling" errors. A few scholars have studied them but these tablets have not gotten as much attention as many other tablets from Ugarit. The good news is that the texts are not very long.
Here's my problem. At important places in each of these tablets, I cannot convince myself of the details of their meaning and therefore of their translation. This is particularly true of two of the tablets. On the one hand, I am tempted to just follow Pardee and let it go at that. After all, he knows more Ugaritic than I can ever hope to learn and the primary evidence for my idea does not depend on the exact details of translation. On the other hand, a few of those details seem supportive of my idea if not in a crucial way. And I am never comfortable discussing any texts unless I've worked my way through them and have developed my own understanding independent of others even if, in the end, that understand is exactly the same as someone else's.
Well, I guess I'll continue to beat my head against the texts on these tablets a little longer. Thanks for taking time for this short catharsis.
Posted by Duane Smith at December 22, 2007 11:24 AM | Read more on Ugarit |
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Comments
Keep it up Duane, you can do it!
Posted by: Charles Halton at December 22, 2007 1:03 PM
I for one support independent thinking, even if they say I'm a bastard. (Don't listen to the rumours, hehe.) The thing I notice often about academic specialization is that a person may become so "specialist" that they overlook something important in a field outside their expertise. No one can know everything afterall and the relational web of Knowledge defies hierarchical specialization.
I think it's important for people to have the freedom to question and to learn subjects without feeling badly or apologetic about it, as though they're "stepping on the toes of experts". What's the worst thing that can happen anyway? Maybe our egos will be bruised for pursuing one of our ideas and finding out that we're wrong? Oh well. Qué sera. I've never met a single person that was right 100% of the time and experts are human too. Keep up the good work.
Posted by: Glen Gordon at December 22, 2007 9:31 PM
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