A Primer on Ugaritic: Language, Culture and Literature

by William M. Schniedewind, Joel H. Hunt

A Primer on Ugaritic is an introduction to the language of the ancient city of Ugarit, a city that flourished in the second millennium BCE on the Lebanese coast, placed in the context of the culture, literature, and religion of this ancient Semitic culture. The Ugaritic language and literature was a precursor to Canaanite and serves as one of our most important resources for understanding the Old Testament and the Hebrew language. Special emphasis is placed on contextualization of the Ugartic language and comparison to ancient Hebrew as well as Akkadian.

Genres: Language, Academic

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This aims to be a modern textbook of Ugaritic, teaching students the language through actual Ugaritic literature (e.g. letters). In spite of the claim on page 1 that the book “does not presume knowledge of Hebrew or Akkardian”, this is not actually the case: the description of the Ugaritic’s flexion is replete with comparison to Hebrew and readers are unable to simply approach Ugaritic directly.

I may return to this book and adjust my rating when my knowledge of Hebrew is better, but for the time being I find this primer to be a disappointment.

[Per · Rating 3 out of 5]

𐎜 𐎎 𐎋

That's Ugaritic for "your mother", now I just have to get myself a clay tablet and make a nice cuneiform decoration for my living room wall.

[Marcus Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first went through “Basics of Ancient Ugaritic” by Michael Williams and then “An Introduction to Ugaritic” by John Huehnergard and I must say this is the most robust out of them all. From depth in grammar, to a variety of genres, history, even to the transliteration and alphabetic cuneiform translations offer the translator a variety of skills whereas the other translation excercises from “Basics of Ancient Ugaritic” and “An Introduction to Ugaritic” are solely transliteration based.

Also, within Ugaritology there are two camps of thought regarding how Ugaritic is pronounced. 1) The first believes Ugaritic is pronounced like Hebrew due to their close proximity. 2) The second belives Ugaritic is pronounced like Akkadian due to its scribal cultural influence upon Ugarit. Huehnergard takes the first position and Schniedewind and Hunt take the second position. I appreciate the difference in perspectives and it comes out in the grammars. Especially, now that I am going through Huehnergard’s “A Grammar of Akkadian” Schiedewind and Hunt seem more persuasive in their view of Akkadian influence.

Highly, recommend for Ugaritiogists or OT/ANE students

[Robert Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The opening says this is for any and all comers -- students of the various semitic languages -- to learn Ugaritic by easily. I don't think that is the case. For semester one, I would think Williams' "The Basics of Ancient Ugaritic" would be best. This would be second or third semester.