| Ugaritic | |
|---|---|
 The Ugaritic writing system | |
| Script type | |
Time period | from around 1400 BCE |
| Direction | Left-to-right  |
| Languages | Ugaritic,Hurrian,Akkadian |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Ugar(040), Ugaritic |
| Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Ugaritic |
| U+10380–U+1039F | |
| This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. | |
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TheUgaritic writing system is acuneiformabjad (consonantal alphabet) withsyllabic elements used from around either 1400 BCE[1] or 1300 BCE[2] forUgaritic, an extinctNorthwest Semitic language. It was discovered inUgarit, modern Ras Shamra,Syria, in 1928. It has 30 letters. Other languages, particularlyHurrian, 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 North Semitic and South Semitic orders of the alphabet, which gave rise to the alphabetic orders of the reducedPhoenician writing system and its descendants, includingthe Paleo-Hebrew alphabet,Hebrew,Syriac,Greek andLatin, and of theGeʽez script, which was also influenced by the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system,[3] and adapted forAmharic. TheArabic andAncient South Arabian scripts are the only other Semitic alphabets which have letters for all or almost all of the 29 commonly reconstructedproto-Semitic consonant phonemes.
Note that several of these distinctions were only secondarily added to the Arabic alphabet by means of diacritic dots. According to Manfried Dietrich and Oswald Loretz inHandbook of Ugaritic Studies, 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" (82, 89, 614).
The script was written from left to right. Although cuneiform and pressed into clay, its symbols were unrelated to those ofAkkadian cuneiform.[4]
The Ugaritic writing system was an augmentedabjad. In most syllables only consonants were written, including the/w/ and/j/ ofdiphthongs. Ugaritic was unusual among early abjads because it also indicated vowels occurring after theglottal stop. It is thought that the letter for the syllable/ʔa/ originally represented the consonant/ʔ/, as aleph does in other Semitic abjads, and that it was later restricted to/ʔa/ with the addition, at the end of the alphabet, of/ʔi/ and/ʔu/.[5][6]
The final consonantal letter of the alphabet,s2, has a disputed origin along with both "appended" glottals, but "The patent similarity ofform 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). Infunction, [s2] is like Ugaritic s, but only in certain words – other s-words are never written with [s2]."[7]
The words that shows2 are predominantly borrowings, and thus it is often thought to be a late addition to the alphabet representing a foreign sound that could be approximated by native /s/; Huehnergard and Pardee make it the affricate /ts/.[8] Segert instead theorizes that it may have been syllabic /su/, and for this reason grouped with the other syllabic signs /ʔi/ and /ʔu/.[9]
Probably the last three letters of the alphabet were originally developed for transcribing non-Ugaritic languages (texts in theAkkadian language andHurrian language have been found written in the Ugaritic alphabet) and were then applied to write the Ugaritic language.[4] The three letters denoting glottal stop plus vowel combinations were used as simple vowel letters when writing other languages.
The only punctuation is aword divider.[citation needed]
At the time the Ugaritic script was in use (c. 1300–1190 BCE),[10] Ugarit, although not a great cultural or imperial centre, was located at the geographic centre of the literate world, amongEgypt,Anatolia,Cyprus,Crete, andMesopotamia. Ugaritic combined the system of theSemitic abjad with cuneiform writing methods (pressing a stylus into clay). 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 theProto-Sinaitic script,[11] 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 understoodByblos syllabary.[12]
It has been proposed in this regard that the two basic shapes in cuneiform, a linear wedge, as in𐎂, and a corner wedge, as in𐎓, may correspond to lines and circles in the linear Semitic alphabets: the three Semitic letters with circles, preserved in theGreekΘ,O andLatinQ, are all made with corner wedges in Ugaritic:𐎉ṭ,𐎓ʕ, and𐎖q. Other letters look similar as well:𐎅 h resembles its assumed Greek cognate E, while𐎆 w,𐎔 p, and𐎘 θ are similar to Greek Y, Π, and Σ turned on their sides.[11]Jared Diamond[13] believes the alphabet was consciously designed, citing as evidence the possibility that the letters with the fewest strokes may have been the most frequent.
Lists of Ugaritic letters,abecedaria, have been found in two alphabetic orders. The "Northern Semitic order" is more similar to the one found inPhoenician,Hebrew andArabic, the earlier, so-calledʾabjadī order, and more distantly, theGreek andLatin alphabets. The "Southern Semitic order" is more similar to the one found in theSouth Arabian, and theGeʽez scripts. The Ugaritic (U) letters are given in cuneiform andtransliteration.
North Semitic
| Letter: | 𐎀 | 𐎁 | 𐎂 | 𐎃 | 𐎄 | 𐎅 | 𐎆 | 𐎇 | 𐎈 | 𐎉 | 𐎊 | 𐎋 | 𐎌 | 𐎍 | 𐎎 | 𐎏 | 𐎐 | 𐎑 | 𐎒 | 𐎓 | 𐎔 | 𐎕 | 𐎖 | 𐎗 | 𐎘 | 𐎙 | 𐎚 | 𐎛 | 𐎜 | 𐎝 |
| Transliteration: | 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 |
South Semitic
| Letter: | 𐎅 | 𐎍 | 𐎈 | 𐎎 | 𐎖 | 𐎆 | 𐎌 | 𐎗 | 𐎚 | 𐎒 | 𐎋 | 𐎐 | 𐎃 | 𐎁 | 𐎔 | 𐎀 | 𐎓 | 𐎑 | 𐎂 | 𐎄 | 𐎙 | 𐎉 | 𐎇 | 𐎏 | 𐎊 | 𐎘 | 𐎕 | [ | 𐎛 | 𐎜 | 𐎝 | ] | ||
| Transliteration: | h | l | ḥ | m | q | w | š | r | t | s | k | n | ḫ | b | ś | p | ʾa | ʿ | ẓ | g | d | ġ | ṭ | z | ḏ | y | ṯ | ṣ | [ | ʾi | ʾu | s2 | ] |
| Sign | Trans. | IPA | Phoenician | Ancient South Arabian | Hebrew |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 𐎀 | ʾa | ʔa | 𐤀 | 𐩱 | אַ |
| 𐎁 | b | b | 𐤁 | 𐩨 | ב |
| 𐎂 | g | ɡ | 𐤂 | 𐩴 | ג |
| 𐎃 | ḫ | x | — | 𐩭 | — |
| 𐎄 | d | d | 𐤃 | 𐩵 | ד |
| 𐎅 | h | h | 𐤄 | 𐩠 | ה |
| 𐎆 | w | w | 𐤅 | 𐩥 | ו |
| 𐎇 | z | z | 𐤆 | 𐩸 | ז |
| 𐎈 | ḥ | ħ | 𐤇 | 𐩢 | ח |
| 𐎉 | ṭ | tˤ | 𐤈 | 𐩷 | ט |
| 𐎊 | y | j | 𐤉 | 𐩺 | י |
| 𐎋 | k | k | 𐤊 | 𐩫 | כ |
| 𐎌 | š | ʃ | — | 𐩦 | — |
| 𐎍 | l | l | 𐤋 | 𐩡 | ל |
| 𐎎 | m | m | 𐤌 | 𐩣 | מ |
| 𐎏 | ḏ | ð | — | 𐩹 | — |
| 𐎐 | n | n | 𐤍 | 𐩬 | נ |
| 𐎑 | ẓ | ðˤ | — | 𐩼 | — |
| 𐎒 | s | s | — | 𐩪 | — |
| 𐎓 | ʿ | ʕ | 𐤏 | 𐩲 | ע |
| 𐎔 | p | p | 𐤐 | 𐩰 | פ |
| 𐎕 | ṣ | sˤ | 𐤑 | 𐩮 | צ |
| 𐎖 | q | q | 𐤒 | 𐩤 | ק |
| 𐎗 | r | r | 𐤓 | 𐩧 | ר |
| 𐎘 | ṯ | θ | 𐩦 | 𐩻 | ש |
| 𐎙 | ġ | ɣ | — | 𐩶 | — |
| 𐎚 | t | t | 𐤕 | 𐩩 | ת |
| 𐎛 | ʾi | ʔi | — | — | — |
| 𐎜 | ʾu | ʔu | — | — | — |
| 𐎝 | s2 | su | 𐤎 | 𐩯 | ס |
| 𐎟 | word divider | 𐤟 | — | ||
Two shorter variants of the Ugaritic alphabet existed with findspots primarily not in the area of Ugarit. Findspots have includedTel Beit Shemesh,Sarepta, andTiryns. It is generally found on inscribed objects vs the tablets of the standard Ugaritic alphabet and unlike the standard version it is usually written right to left.[15] One variant contained 27 letters and the other 22 letters. It is not known what the relative chronology of the different Ugaritic alphabets was.[16][17][18]
Ugaritic script was added to theUnicode Standard in April, 2003 with the release of version 4.0.
The Unicode block for Ugaritic is U+10380–U+1039F:
| Ugaritic[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF) | ||||||||||||||||
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
| U+1038x | 𐎀 | 𐎁 | 𐎂 | 𐎃 | 𐎄 | 𐎅 | 𐎆 | 𐎇 | 𐎈 | 𐎉 | 𐎊 | 𐎋 | 𐎌 | 𐎍 | 𐎎 | 𐎏 |
| U+1039x | 𐎐 | 𐎑 | 𐎒 | 𐎓 | 𐎔 | 𐎕 | 𐎖 | 𐎗 | 𐎘 | 𐎙 | 𐎚 | 𐎛 | 𐎜 | 𐎝 | 𐎟 | |
| Notes | ||||||||||||||||
Six letters for transliteration were added to theLatin Extended-D block in March 2019 with the release of Unicode 12.0:[19]