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Ugaritic

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Ugaritic

Ugaritic (/ˌjɡəˈrɪtɪk, ˌ-/) is an extinct Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycle.

Ugaritic has been called "the greatest literary discovery from antiquity since the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform".

The Ugaritic language is attested in texts from the 14th through the early 12th century BC. The city of Ugarit was destroyed roughly 1190 BC.

Literary texts discovered at Ugarit include the Legend of Keret or Kirta, the legends of Danel (AKA 'Aqhat), the Myth of Baal-Aliyan, and the Death of Baal. The latter two are also known collectively as the Baal Cycle. These texts reveal aspects of ancient Northwest Semitic religion in Syria-Palestine during the Late Bronze Age.

Edward Greenstein has proposed that Ugaritic texts might help solve biblical puzzles such as the anachronism of Ezekiel mentioning Daniel in Ezekiel 14:13–16 actually referring to Danel, a hero from the Ugaritic Tale of Aqhat.

Ugaritic had 28 consonantal phonemes (including two semivowels) and eight vowel phonemes (three short vowels and five long vowels): a ā i ī u ū ē ō. The phonemes ē and ō occur only as long vowels and are the result of monophthongization of the diphthongs аy and aw, respectively.

The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Ugaritic, Akkadian, Classical Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew:

The Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform script used beginning in the 15th century BC. Like most Semitic scripts, it is an abjad, where each symbol stands for a consonant, leaving the reader to supply the appropriate vowel.

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