A Primer on Ugaritic: Language, Culture and Literature [Paperback]

William M. Schniedewind (Author), Joel H. Hunt (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521704936 | ISBN-13: 978-0521704939 | Publication Date: July 2, 2007

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In contrast to many introductory Semitic language grammars, this volume is surprisingly readable. The presentation is clear, accessible, and largely jargon-free. Because of the thoughtful arrangement and composition of this primer, students will be able to learn the language more quickly and enjoyably. . . . Schniedewind and Hunt have produced a very fine grammar that will surely be a welcome mainstay in all levels of introductory Ugaritic courses whether they are undergraduate or graduate programs." ---The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures

Book Description

A Primer on Ugaritic is an introduction to the language of the ancient city of Ugarit, 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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 244 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (July 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521704936
• ISBN-13: 978-0521704939
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #121,991 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ugaritic for the masses, September 15, 2007

By 

Raymond G. Harder "BookBoy" (Pomona, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Primer on Ugaritic: Language, Culture and Literature (Hardcover)

Introductory books on obscure subjects are usually themselves abstruse and enigmatic. However, "A Primer on Ugaritic Language, Culture, and Literature" is at the same time both erudite and accessible. This book should serve as a model for all introductory texts on ancient languages.

I was a graduate student of Dr. Schniedewind's late predecessor at UCLA, Dr. Stanislav Segert, and I have read at lease a half a dozen Ugaritic textbooks cover to cover over the years. This is by far the best from a student perspective. Scholars can debate whether 'adrt really is derived from *<dr or if 'unt_ really is a "lehnwort" (loaned word derived) from Hurrian, but students don't really care. They just want to translate this or that text required for tomorrow's class. Students also don't want to carry a lexicon (dictionary of two languages), grammar, and a chrestomathy (collection of texts) to class as well as three different volumes to their Syriac class after that! Having one volume that provides them with texts (chrestomathy style), lexical aides (i.e. a glossary of every word in the texts), and notes on grammatical, historical, geographic, and cultural issues makes the life of the student much easier! When all is said and done, shouldn't textbooks be designed for students and not scholars?

Yes, $80 is a great deal of money for a book, but keep in mind that during my graduate studies at UCLA I remember spending about $1,500 one quarter for textbooks for one language class. This book is extremely well designed with the student and the pedagogical process in mind. Professors can assign the book with assurance that this single volume is all that is necessary for the instructor and the students for the duration of the introductory class.

No modern English as a second language class would start students with Ginsburg, Keats, Shakespeare, or Chaucer to learn beginning English. No beginning French class would start with La Disparition (Georges Perec's famous French novel that doesn't contain a single letter "E" in any of its 300 pages!). Why should students of ancient languages like Ugaritic start learning with the Aqhat or Keret epics? Schniedewind and Hunt's choice to start students with school texts followed by letters, administrative, legal, and only then literary texts is an extremely logical and pedagogically sound approach.

For students of the bible, semitic languages, ancient near eastern history, or literature, this primer is especially useful because of its diversity of subject matter. At some point in their academic career, students of semitic languages will have to learn that words that had the "th" sound in ancient times (so called "proto-semitic") use the letter or sign "sh" in Hebrew, Phoenician, and Akkadian; but "th" in Ugaritic, Arabic, and Aramaic. Therefore, "shad" in Hebrew could very well be the same as the word "thad" in Ugaritic, but "thad" in Hebrew would never be "shad" in Ugaritic etc. There are very consistent "rules" that every serious student of semitics must know. These and other linguistic rules are covered in a solid introductory way in this primer (e.g. pp. 150ff).

For students of the Hebrew bible, Ugaritic is the most important language after Hebrew itself. A century ago, serious students of Hebrew and the semitic languages studied Arabic as a second language because Arabic has a fairly conservatively evolved grammar and supposedly reflected a much older stage of the semitic languages. However, our primary corpus of "ancient" Arabic, the Koran, is from approximately 1,500 years after the literary origins of the Bible and it is about 3,000 years after Hebrew was evolving into the form that developed into "Biblical" Hebrew. However, Ugaritic is a language for which we have actual, physical texts from the very time that the stories in the Bible were evolving. Furthermore, these texts were written just a few miles from the lands of the Hebrew bible by a people with a similar culture and language to the writers of the Bible itself.

For students of ancient religious history, this book will help them to understand the ancient northwest semitic pantheon in early and pre-biblical times. For students of literature, the book will serve as a excellent introduction to ancient genres likely to be encountered in later studies. For an introductory text both the diversity and depth are impressive.

The publishers are to be commended for letting the authors show alphabetic texts in their original scripts rather than transliteration. Seeing Hebrew texts in Hebrew characters (E.g. pg. 113 and the glossary) and Ugaritic texts in Ugaritic characters makes learning easier over time because one doesn't have to jump through the mental hoops of transliterating before translating each word. The addition of photographs of actual texts (e.g. Zuckerman's photos of the MRZHU text on pages 109-110) help the student learn to recognize texts in context. This is an important skill. (It is shocking to see senior Hebrew scholars who read hebrew fluently but couldn't make sense of a real manuscript because they have never read anything but modern printed editions of texts!) On the other hand, the choice to transliterate Akkadian is also logical and pedagogically sound because, unlike Ugaritic and Hebrew, Akkadian has no alphabet and the writing system takes far longer to master than the language itself! It is unlikely that students would be able to recognize Akkadian signs and give then accurate interpretation independently of context so transliteration is an appropriate choice here.

For serious students of the Bible, I would recommend the study of Hebrew and Greek first. For students of the Hebrew bible, Ugaritic is the most important language after Hebrew itself. For students who choose (or are required) to learn Ugaritic, Schniedewind and Hunt's primer is currently the best available choice for a solid start in learning the language, texts, and culture. For $80, that's a bargin in my opinion....

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars About Time!, August 23, 2007

By 

Harry A. Smith (Tallahassee, Fl) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Primer on Ugaritic: Language, Culture and Literature (Hardcover)

Finally! An actual introductory textbook on Ugaritic that is accessible and user-friendly. There isabsolutely nothing else like it available to introductory students. Now is we could only have a paperback INEXPENSIVE collection of Ugaritic texts we would be in business! I particularly like the fact that some of the readings are in the cuneiform script and provides great practice for reading this. It is very much worth the money!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More than a grammar, September 23, 2007

By 

L. A. Davey (Sydney Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Primer on Ugaritic: Language, Culture and Literature (Paperback)

The discovery that this work is available was exciting, as a group here in Sydney Australia has been working on aspects of Ugaritic. This book is ideal from several points of view. First is the use of the Ugaritic font, so that texts can be read in the original script. A second involves the range of texts included. A third element derives from the use of photos and drawings in the text, and a fourth the presentation of grammatical aspects including more recent findings about the structure of Ugaritic.
This is certainly a valuable addition to the wide range of works on Ugarit and associated studies, since it is well planned for students in both degree and graduate programs.