The Ugaritic alphabet is a consonantal alphabet (abjad) that was written using the same tools as those used to write cuneiform (i.e. pressing a wedge-shaped stylus into a clay tablet). It was mostly written from left to right, but not exclusively. It emerged William M. Schniedewind, A Primer on Ugaritic, p. 32 or 1300 BCEUgaritic, in The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia to write Ugaritic, an extinct Northwest Semitic language, and fell out of use amid the Late Bronze Age collapse . The inscriptions found provide the earliest evidence in history of systematic and large-scale administrative use of an alphabetical writing system.
The discovery of abecedaries in the Ugaritic alphabet also provide the earliest direct evidence of not just the "abc" alphabetical order but also the "hlḥm" order. Examples of scripts that have also used these are the Phoenician, Paleo-Hebrew, Aramaic square script, Syriac, Greek and Latin alphabets for the "abc" order as well as the Geʽez script from which Amharic was adapted for the "hlḥm". Many if not most alphabets in use today order their letters in one of these two traditions.
The Ugaritic alphabet has 30 letters. The Arabic, Ancient North Arabian and Ancient South Arabian scripts are the only other Semitic alphabets which have letters for all or almost all of the 29 commonly reconstructed Proto-Semitic consonant phonemes. Other languages, particularly Hurrian, were occasionally written in the Ugaritic script in the area around Ugarit, but not elsewhere. The script was also sparsely used to write Akkadian but alphabetically. Although the Ugaritic alphabet is considered fully deciphered, a significant minority of terms written in it remain etymologically uncertain at best and do not always appear to belong to any Semitic language.
The script was first discovered in 1928 at the site of ancient Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra, Syria).
Letters Below is an introductory table to Ugaritic letters when compared to similar and better-known scripts. This method of comparison is not exact but can be helpful for first-time readers. Note that the table is not ordered in any of the alphabetical orders found at Ugarit (and which are discussed later in this article). Also note that no direct evidence for Ugaritic letter names has been found other than partial abecedaries showing Akkadian cuneiform counterparts. Letter Phoneme IPA Corresponding letter in Phoen. OSA AramaicHebrewArabic ả (ʾa) [] b g ḫ ḥ d ḏ z h w ṭ ẓ ṣ y k s š ṯ t l m n ʿ ġ p q r ỉ (ʾi) [] ủ (ʾu) [] s₂ [] word divider
Origin
At the time the Ugaritic script was in use (),Ugaritic, in The Ancient-Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia the city of Ugarit, although not a great imperial centre, was located at the geographic centre of the literate world, among Egypt, Anatolia, Cyprus, Crete, and Mesopotamia. For this reason, the city came into contact with multiple different writing systems each possessing its own set of attributes such as alphabetical order, letter naming conventions, direction of writing or the languages written in them including associated pronunciation of letters.
Cuneiform hypothesis Many standard, non-alphabetical Akkadian cuneiform texts were unearthed at Ugarit. The facts that the Ugaritic alphabet is written in cuneiform and that it has been found to overwhemingly follow the same writing direction as other cuneiform systems both support the hypothesis that Ugaritic was directly inspired by a cuneiform system such as Akkadian cuneiform. Moreover, one can argue that Ugaritic glyphs can be easily compared to common Akkadian "equivalents" as exemplified in the table below. +AkkadianUgariticla𒆷 𐎅lḫu𒄷𐎈ḥma𒈠𐎎mqu𒄣𐎖qpa𒉺𐎔p-a𒀀𐎀a-u𒌋𐎓ʿza𒍝𐎇zza𒍝𐎕ṣ
Proto-Sinaitic origin hypothesis Some have suggested that the Ugaritic alphabet represents some form of the Proto-Sinaitic script,Brian Colless, Cuneiform alphabet and picto-proto-alphabet the letter forms distorted as an adaptation to writing on clay with a stylus. 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: ṭ, ʕ, and q. Other letters look similar as well: h resembles its assumed Greek cognate E, while w, p, and θ are similar to Greek Y, Π, and Σ turned on their sides.
Other hypotheses In practice and due to the simple and highly abstract nature of Ugaritic characters, it is easy to find graphical similarities and phonological matches with many other scripts of the time. One such example is "y" in hieratic 𓇌 matching Ugaritic 𐎊. Others have compared its appearance to that of the Cypro-Minoan script. There may also have been a degree of influence from the poorly understood Byblos syllabary attested in the nearby Byblos.A Basic Grammar of the Ugaritic Language: With Selected Texts and Glossary, p. 19 by Stanislav Segert, 1985.
Jared DiamondWriting Right | Senses | DISCOVER Magazine believes the alphabet was consciously designed, citing as evidence the possibility that the letters with the fewest strokes may also have been the most frequent.
Hugo Cartwright, a Franco-British software engineer, considers the possibility that syllabic compression of the Ugaritic language was a rule of thumb in the design choice of Ugaritic letters but focuses instead on analysing alphabetical order.
Abecedaries Two types of abecedaries have been found in the Ugaritic alphabet and were sometimes labelled "North and South Semitic" as they were first found North and South of each other.
The "abc" or "abg" The "abc" or "abg" order is more similar to the one found in Phoenician, Hebrew and Arabic, the earlier, so-called ʾabjadī order, and more distantly, the Greek and Latin alphabets. The table below shows the kind of abecedaries found and is read from left-to-right first and from top-to-bottom second. The letters are given in cuneiform letters as well as their transliteration equivalent below. The abecedaries are laid out in two dimensions to illustrate how they were often written in this way.
𐎀𐎁𐎂𐎃𐎄𐎅𐎆𐎇𐎈𐎉ʾabgḫdhwzḥṭ𐎊𐎋𐎌𐎍𐎎𐎏𐎐𐎑𐎒ykšlmḏnẓs𐎓𐎔𐎕𐎖𐎗𐎘𐎙𐎚𐎛𐎜𐎝ʿpṣqrṯġtʾiʾus2
The "hlḥm" This table is also read from left-to-right first and from top-to-bottom second. And is meant to represent one of those tablets (called RS 88.2215). Note that this abecedary does not have letters b, ʾi, ʾu and s2 although the letter b is usually expected in this kind of order. 𐎅𐎍𐎈𐎎𐎖𐎆𐎌 𐎗 hlḥmqwš r 𐎚𐎒𐎋𐎐𐎃𐎔𐎀𐎓𐎑(b)tsknḫpʾaʿẓ𐎂𐎄𐎙𐎉𐎇𐎏𐎊𐎘𐎕gdġṭzḏyṯṣ
Alphabetical order Beyond the abecedary examples found at Ugarit and listed above, it's worth mentioning that a hieratic ostracon found in an Egyptian tomb may in fact be an older but very partial example of an "abg" and "hlḥm" double-abecedary but this remains a subject of study.
Order proximity with Safaitic orders Order proximity between both alphabetical orders as well as comparisons with as-of-yet uncategorized Safaitic abecedaries have been found. In his preprint on ordered set comparisons, Cartwright discusses evidence that Safaitic alphabetical orders have order proximities with the Ugaritic alphabet.
Comparison of the "abg" and "hlḥm" Cartwright, describes the closeness in permutation space of two non-Ugaritic abecedaries' orders, one being considered an "abg" order and the other a "hlḥm" order. He achieves this by measuring rank closeness and by considering orders as gap buffered 2D objects.Hawley, 2008. Apprendre à écrire à Ougarit :
une typologie des abécédaires. +Boustrophedon reading of the Maghrebian abjadi sequenceABGWHDH.ZT.LKYMNS.D.POQRSSHTHTKHZ.DHGH When read from top-to-bottom and left-to-right, this Maghrebian abjadi order can be compared to the abecedary Tay 19 found in the oasis of TaymaMacdonald, 1986. +Comparison of the "abg" and "hlḥm"mod. Magh. abjadi AWH.LMD.QSHGHBHZKNPRTHZ.GDT.YS.OSTDHKHTay 19ALH.MQWSHRBT1SKNGH[S.]S3[P][H][O]D.GDT2KH This is further reinforced by how letters S., P, H and O are scratched out in the Tay 19 inscription.
MISSA2 and the Amorite language Cartwright also considers the closeness of Safaitic abecedary MISSA2's alphabetical order with various orders. He underlines high permutation closeness of MISSA2 with the frequency of consonants of the Amorite language used in the "Amorite Bilinguals" published by Krebernik and George. He also found high permutation closeness between MISSA2 and compressed syllabic reconstructions of Ugaritic and Phoenician.
He suggests that the first characters of MISSA2 (t ṯ y ʾ ṣ) have special role as they seem absent from the Amorite character frequency and have higher graphical complexity. He also compares them to y ṣ ʿ s t underlined in the boustrophedon Maghrebian abjadi comparison with Tay 19.
Safaitic abecedaries (tṯyʾṣ)Group 12345678MISS.A 2 t ṯ y ʾ ṣb r ml n ḫ h z kḥ s¹s² ġ fḍ ṭʿ w gḏ d ẓ qMISS.A 2 character complexityHighLowLowLowMidHighMidHighWH 3598 in columns of 10{f} ʾ s² t ṣr {b} ml z {ẓ} k ḫs¹ṯ d g yq ṭ ḍ ḏw ġh ʿ n ḥAmorite languageCharacter frequencyr n ʾ b ml k d t ś y zḫ š p q g w ʿḥ ṭ ṣ s ḏ h ẓScript theoryUgaritic graphically𐎚 𐎘 𐎀 𐎔 𐎕𐎙 𐎎 𐎁 𐎂 𐎇 𐎃 𐎐 𐎅 𐎛 𐎍 𐎜𐎒𐎌 𐎓 𐎏𐎖 𐎑 𐎉 𐎈𐎋 𐎆 𐎗𐎄 𐎊 𐎝Above transliterated *t ṯ ʾ p ṣġ m bg z ḫ n h ʾi l ʾusš ʿ ḏq ẓ ṭ ḥk w rd y s2Wedge count1 2 2 2 22 2 41 2 3 3 3 4 3 433 1 22 3 3 43 4 56 6 7Old South Arabian𐩼𐩮𐩺𐩻𐩩𐩣𐩧𐩨𐩸𐩬𐩫𐩶𐩡𐩴𐩪𐩢𐩵𐩰𐩯𐩦𐩤𐩹𐩳𐩷𐩥𐩲𐩭𐩱𐩠 Transliterationt ṯ y ṣ ẓb r mglġknzḥ sš s3 f dṭ ḍ ḏ q ʿ wh ʾ ḫ Switching the n and ẓ of WH 3598 in columns of 10 results in "h ʿ ẓ ḥ" being grouped together which are phonemes not directly rendered in Akkadian cuneiform.
Is.Mu 650 and Is.R 204 Using row (*) and comparison with MISS.A 2, an alternative reading of the Ugaritic alphabet can be used to help interpret other Safaitic abecedaries, most notably Is.R 204 and Is.Mu 650.ʾ b k ḫ ḏ h w z ḥ ṭ y g š l m d n ḍ s r p ṣ q ġ ṯ o t i u s2The Ugaritic alphabet can then be read in columns in a way that also resembles the character frequency of inscriptions such as that on the Ahiram Sarcophagus.ʾ l t b m i k d u ḫ n s2 ḏ ḍ h s w r z p ḥ ṣ ṭ q y ġ g ṯ š oTo compare this to Is.R 204 and Is.Mu 650, one can order the letters as: ḥ k n ḏ h y w z g ṣ š ʾ l t b m i d u ḫ ḍ s r ġ p ṯ ṭ ʿ s2 qWhich is then comparable to Is.R 204 or Is.Mu 650. k ḍ h y w q g ṣ š (h) ʾ l t (s ʿ) d ḫ ṭ m b ġ f ṯ s ʿ n zLetters in between brackets are duplicates whose reading resembles other letters in Safaitic.
Implications for the interpretation of undeciphered scripts By reevaluating the "table of correspondence of letters" of which a description is given earlier in this article, Cartwright uses comparisons (MISS.A 2 + Ugaritic alphabet) and (abgd + Tay 19) as new evidence for a future decipherment of the Byblos syllabary and the Proto-Sinaitic Script. It supports the idea that these script may have been written in previously unexpected spelling or phonology, explaining current reading difficulties.
Ugaritic short alphabet