Ugaritic Alphabet

Ugaritic

The Ugaritic Alphabet

Type abjad

Languages Ugaritic, Hurrian

Time

period

from around 1400 BCE

ISO 15924 Ugar, 040

Direction Left-to-right

Unicode

alias

Ugaritic

Unicode

range

U+10380–U+1039F

(http://www.unicode.org/charts

/PDF/U10380.pdf)

Ugaritic alphabetFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ugaritic script is a cuneiform (wedge-shaped) abjad

used from around either the fifteenth century BCE[1] or

1300 BCE[2] for Ugaritic, an extinct Northwest Semitic

language, and discovered in Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra),

Syria, in 1928. It has 30 letters. Other languages (particularly

Hurrian) were occasionally written in the Ugaritic script in

the area around Ugarit, although not elsewhere.

Clay tablets written in Ugaritic provide the earliest evidence

of both the West and South Semitic orders of the alphabet,

which gave rise to the alphabetic orders of Arabic (in earlier

order of its abjad), the reduced Hebrew, and more distantly

Greek, and Latin alphabets on the one hand, and of the Ge'ez

alphabet on the other. Arabic and Old South Arabian are the

only other Semitic alphabets which have letters for all or

almost all of the 29 commonly reconstructed proto-Semitic

consonant phonemes. According to Dietrich and Loretz in

Handbook of Ugaritic Studies (ed. Watson and Wyatt, 1999):

"The language they [the 30 signs] represented could be

described as an idiom which in terms of content seemed to be

comparable to Canaanite texts, but from a phonological

perspective, however, was more like Arabic."

The script was written from left to right. Although cuneiform and pressed into clay, its symbols were unrelated

to those of Akkadian cuneiform.

Contents

1 Function

2 Origin

3 Abecedaries

4 Letters

5 Unicode

6 See also

7 References

8 External links

Function

Ugaritic was an augmented abjad. In most syllables only consonants were written, including the /w/ and /j/ of

diphthongs. However, Ugaritic was unusual among early abjads in also writing vowels after glottal stop. It is

thought that the letter for the syllable /ʔa/, originally represented the consonant /ʔ/, as aleph does in other

Ugaritic alphabet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugaritic_alphabet

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dark green shows approximate spread of

writing by 1300 BCE

Semitic abjads, and that it was later restricted to /ʔa/ with the addition, at the end of the alphabet, of /ʔi/ and

/ʔu/.[3][4]

The final consonantal letter of the alphabet, s2, has a disputed origin along with both 'appended' glottals, but

"The patent similarity of form between the Ugaritic symbol transliterated [s2], and the s-character of the later

Northwest Semitic script makes a common origin likely, but the reason for the addition of this sign to the

Ugaritic alphabet is unclear (compare Segert 1983:201-218; Dietrich and Loretz 1988). In function, [s2] is like

Ugaritic s, but only in certain words - other s-words are never written with [s2]."[5] Segert theorizes that is may

have been syllabic /su/, which would explain why it is listed after /ʔi/ and /ʔu/[6]

The only punctuation is a word divider.

Origin

At the time the Ugaritic script was in use (ca. 1300–1190 BCE),[7]

Ugarit was at the centre of the literate world, among Egypt,

Anatolia, Cyprus, Crete, and Mesopotamia. Ugaritic combined the

system of the Semitic abjad with cuneiform writing methods

(pressing a stylus into clay). However, scholars have searched in

vain for graphic prototypes of the Ugaritic letters in Mesopotamian

cuneiform. Recently, some have suggested that Ugaritic represents

some form of the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet,[8] the letter forms

distorted as an adaptation to writing on clay with a stylus. (There

may also have been a degree of influence from the poorly

understood Byblos syllabary.[9]) It has been proposed in this regard

that the two basic shapes in cuneiform, a linear wedge, as in , and

a corner wedge, as in , may correspond to lines and circles in the linear Semitic alphabets: the three Semitic

letters with circles, preserved in the Greek Θ, O and Latin Q, are all made with corner wedges in Ugaritic:

Tet, Ain, and Qopa. Other letters look similar as well: Ho resembles its assumed Greek cognate E,

while Wo, Pu, and Thanna are similar to Greek Y, Π, and Σ turned on their sides.[8] Jared Diamond[10]

believes the alphabet was consciously designed, citing as evidence the possibility that the letters with the fewest

strokes may have been the most frequent.

Abecedaries

Lists of Ugaritic letters (abecedaria, singular abecedarium) have been found in two alphabetic orders: the

"Northern Semitic order" more similar to the one found in Arabic (earlier order), Hebrew and Phoenician, and

more distantly, the Greek and Latin alphabets; and the "Southern Semitic order" more similar to the one found

in the South Arabian, and the Ge'ez alphabets. The letters are given in transcription and in their Arabic and

Hebrew cognates; letters missing from Hebrew are left blank.

North Semitic

ʾa b g ḫ d h w z ḥ ṭ y k š l m ḏ n ẓ s ʿ p ṣ q r ṯ ġ t ʾi ʾu s2

א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ ל מ נ ס ע פ צ ק ר ש ת

South Semitic


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Ugaritic alphabet

h l ḥ m q w š r t s k n ḫ b ś p ʾ ʿ ẓ g d ġ ṭ z ḏ y ṯ ṣ

ה ל ח מ ק ו ר ת ס כ נ ב פ א ע ג ד ט ז י ש צ

Letters


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Ugaritic Letters[11]

Sign Trans. IPA Hebrew Arabic

ʾa ʔa א أ

b b ב ب

g ɡ ג ج

ẖ x خ

d d ד د

h h ה ه

w w ו و

z z ז ز

ḥ ħ ח ح

ṭ t ̴ ט ط

y j י ي

k k כ ك

š ʃ ش

l l ל ل

m m מ م

ḏ ð ذ

n n נ ن

ẓ ð ̴ ظ

s s ס س

ʿ ʕ ע ع

p p פ ف

ṣ s̴ צ ص

q q ק ق

r r ר ر

ṯ θ ש ث

ġ ɣ غ

t t ת ت

ʾi ʔi ئ

ʾu ʔu ؤ

s2

word divider

Unicode


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Main article: Ugaritic (Unicode block)

Ugaritic script was added to the Unicode Standard in April, 2003 with the release of version 4.0.

The Unicode block for Ugaritic is U+10380–U+1039F:

Ugaritic[1]

Unicode.org chart (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10380.pdf) (PDF)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

U+1038x

U+1039x

Notes

1.^ As of Unicode version 6.1

See also

Old Persian cuneiform – a much later, unrelated attempt at a cuneiform semi-alphabet.

References

^ A Primer on Ugaritic, William M. Schniedewind (pg 32) (http://books.google.com.eg

/books?id=L2T_4KVwpTQC&pg=PA149&dq=glottals+AND+Ugaritic&hl=en&

sa=X&ei=yUdaT_TNAs7XsgaNwuD_Cw&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=B.C.E&f=false)

1.

^ Ugaritic, in The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia (http://books.google.com.eg/books?id=vTrT-

bZyuPcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=ancient+languages+of+syria-palestine+and+arabia&hl=en&

sa=X&ei=4lFbT975D4vzsga6gM37Cw&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=1300%201190&f=false)

2.

^ Florian Coulmas, 1991, The writing systems of the world3.

^ William Schniedewind, Joel Hunt, 2007. A primer on Ugaritic (http://books.google.com.eg

/books?id=L2T_4KVwpTQC&pg=PA149&dq=glottals+AND+Ugaritic&hl=en&

sa=X&ei=yUdaT_TNAs7XsgaNwuD_Cw&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=aleph&f=false)

4.

^ Ugaritic, in The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia (http://books.google.com.eg/books?id=vTrT-

bZyuPcC&pg=PA8&dq=glottals+AND+Ugaritic&hl=en&sa=X&ei=yUdaT_TNAs7XsgaNwuD_Cw&

redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=glottals%20AND%20Ugaritic&f=false)

5.

^ Stanislave Segert, "The Last Sign of the Ugaritic Alphabet" in Ugaritic-Forschugen 15 (1983): 201-2186.

^ Ugaritic, in The Ancient-Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia (http://books.google.com.eg/books?id=vTrT-

bZyuPcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=ancient+languages+of+syria-palestine+and+arabia&hl=en&

sa=X&ei=4lFbT975D4vzsga6gM37Cw&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=1300%201190&f=false)

7.

^ a b Brian Colless, Cuneiform alphabet and picto-proto-alphabet (http://sites.google.com/site/collesseum

/cuneiformalphabet)

8.

^ A Basic Grammar of the Ugaritic Language: With Selected Texts and Glossary (http://books.google.com

/books?id=LizxaT7eMqMC&pg=PA19&dq=byblos+ugaritic&client=firefox-

a&sig=JFmrsGxH3P67oD5rPP9ltGEuy2s), p. 19 by Stanislav Segert, 1985.

9.

^ Writing Right | Senses | DISCOVER Magazine (http://discovermagazine.com/1994/jun/writingright384)10.

^ Daniels, Peter T.; Bright, William, eds. (1996). "Epigraphic Semitic Scripts". The World's Writing Systems. Oxford

University Press, Inc. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-19-507993-7.

11.

External links


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AlpuBeti (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&

srcid=0Bw9DD8Hgvs_HZDVkZmI0ODctNjkzZC00ZjY3LWEyOGYtMDBhNTQ0ZDA1Yzlh)

AlphabetEvolution (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&

srcid=0Bw9DD8Hgvs_HMDI1M2RhMTktZDFlYS00NTM2LWFkNzQtN2VmNjMxNTJjYTRl)

Download a Ugaritic font (http://members.tripod.com/~davidmyriad/myriads.font.page.html) (includes

Unicode font)

Ugaritic cuneiform (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10380.pdf) characters from the Unicode

Ugaritic cuneiform script

Ugaritic cuneiform (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ugaritic.htm) Omniglot entry on the subject

Ugaritic script (http://ancientscripts.com/ugaritic.html) (ancientscripts.com)

Ugaritic writing (http://www.mazzaroth.com/ChapterThree/UgariticWriting.htm)

GNU FreeFont (http://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/) Unicode font family with Ugaritic range in its

sans-serif face.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ugaritic_alphabet&oldid=561424562"

Categories: Abjad writing systems Ugaritic language and literature

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Ugaritic Alphabet