Ancient linguistics: Ugaritic and Hebrew

By Mary Fisk|August 27, 2013|Ancient Near East, Semitics and Judaica, Linguistics|0 comments

Ugaritic inscription on an axe. Image from WikiMedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ugaritic_inscription_on_an_axe.jpg

This article from the Jewish Daily Forward (New York) looks at how the ancient language Ugaritic (written in cuneiform characters) was decoded and how scholars noted its linguistic similarities to other Semitic languages of the ancient Near East, such as Phoenician and Biblical-era Hebrew

Click here to read the article in Forward 

 

If you want to follow “Philologos’s'”  recommendation and read Cyrus Gordon’s Ugaritic textbook (1965), the nearest available copy is held at Senate House Library –  click here to see the COPAC record

Here at SOAS, we have his

• Ugaritic grammar (1940) : L.QLB415 / 49326
• Ugaritic handbook (1947) : L.QLB410 / 64625
• Ugaritic literature (1949) : QLB892.6 / 64502

and

• Ugaritic manual (1955) : L.QLB410 / 106425)