Josef Tropper. Ugaritische Grammatik. 1056 pp. Münster, Ugarit-Verlag, 2000. (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 273). The disadvantage of a dead language attested by a small corpus of texts is that it leaves many lacunae in our knowledge of text-dependent aspects of the culture that are revealed by that language; the advantage for the grammarian is that it permits an exhaustive inclusion of the data in a grammatical description. This T. has done in the volume under review, which explains why one of the more poorly attested of the ancient Near-Eastern languages now boasts one of the thickest grammars. The disadvantageous side for the grammarian wishing to exploit these data exhaustively is that, for many grammatical categories, they are very few, all too often a single datum or none at all. The danger is always lurking, therefore, that any given datum is for one reason or another atypical or misunderstood and that a rule be proposed that in fact has no basis. In a relatively brief time, the author has established himself as one of the principal authorities on the ancient Semitic languages, with forty-nine titles cited under his name in the bibliography, dated from 1989 to 2000, including three important monographs. Though he is familiar with the major Semitic languages, indeed has published on several of them, he has concentrated on the Northwest-Semitic languages and particularly on Ugaritic. His grammatical work has always been of the highest order and all who will in the future have reason to investigate any aspect of Ugaritic grammar will do well to start here. I have one general caveat to state and that has nothing to do with the author's abilities but reflects rather a choice and one with which I have no dispute: in order to write so exhaustive a grammar, the author must have taken a decision on the meaning of every text in the corpus and on every word in every text from which data are cited, something that even someone so obviously brilliant as T. cannot expect to have done so early in his career with equal thoroughness everywhere. This human limitation is exacerbated by the current state of Ugaritic epigraphy, which I have described on various occasions:1 the simple fact that many 1See, for example, my review of the collection of Ugaritic texts by M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartín, The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani and Other Places (KTU: Second, Enlarged Edition) (Abhandlungen zur Literatur Alt-Syrien-Palästinas und Mesopotamiens 8; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995) in JSS 42 (1997) 132-37, and my critique of some of T.'s epigraphic observations with regard to this collection of texts in AuOr 16 (1998) 85-102. The 1995 collection will henceforth be abbreviated CAT; the first edition of this work, which dates to 1976 (Die keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 24/1, Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag), will be referred to here as KTU. T. cites Ugaritic texts only by the numbers assigned to them in KTU and in CAT. New-comers to Ugaritic studies should be aware that new texts were included in CAT; for example, in section 1, texts 162-176 are new in CAT. Moreover, texts already included in KTU sometimes, though quite rarely, have been assigned different line numbers in CAT; the most conspicuous case is perhaps RS 24.251+, of which the recto/verso orientation was reversed in CAT—hence a reader checking a reference to ""1.107'' will not find the text in the same place in KTU as in CAT. For these reasons, I prefer to cite texts that appeared in KTU as ""KTU … ,'' those that were added in CAT as ""CAT … ,'' and to use ""KTU/CAT'' when a point is being made with regard to a feature shared by the two editions. T.'s convention is to cite texts by number only, with the primary reference being to CAT; if he wishes specifically to make a point regarding one edition or the other, he cites them as ""KTU1'' and Archiv für Orientforschung 50 (2003/2004) online version – 2 – of the Ugaritic texts still await an authoritative publication based on autopsy makes it certain that any study such as this one will include faulty data. That does not mean, however, as I said in my first description of the situation, that philological study ""must grind to a halt''2 while the time-consuming work of re-editing the texts goes on. It only means that the author and his readers must not expect perfection. In all honesty, the epigraphic improvements that remain to be made will in all likelihood not affect T.'s understanding of any major aspect of Ugaritic grammar, but will have to do rather with moving pieces of data about and with filling in the picture. Thus I would have been the last to counsel T. to hold off publication of his work until the epigraphic picture were clearer. So thorough a status questionis was needed by all of us who work on Ugaritic, not least the epigraphers, for even the most basic epigraphic work must at times take into consideration both what is known epigraphically and the interpretations that these data have received. I would thus not disagree with T.'s assertion that a grammar such as this one is useful as a ""Grundlage für eine fundierte Übersetzung der inhaltlich schwierigen Texte'' (p. 6), though users must not forget that this grammar, like any other original grammar (as opposed to those that simply feed off of their predecessors—which is certainly not the case here!), is based on the author's own analyses of the texts. The counterpoint to this problem of not having been able to analyze every text with equal thoroughness is that T. has analyzed all the texts from a strictly grammatical perspective and has built up a reservoir of grammatical data previously unequaled. He thus will have grammatical insights, even on texts on which he has spent less time than the epigraphars/philologists, that the latter may not have perceived. This was brought home to me when T. pointed out to me some time ago that the only prefix attested in all prose texts and most texts in poetry for 3 m.pl. /YQTL/3 forms is t-; because both y- and t- forms are attested in poetry, I had assumed that such should be the case in prose as well. But, at least with the present corpus of prose works, such is not the case.4 Thus my first interpretation of yrdn g®rm in RS 24.256:18 (KTU 1.112) as a plural on analogy with t≤rbn g®rm in RS 1.005:9 (KTU 1.43) has had to be modified.5 T.'s work is a descriptive grammar that follows the time-honored pattern: script/writing (""Schriftlehre''), phonetics, morphology (including morpho-syntax), and clause/sentence ""KTU2''; if he wishes to express explicitly that a reading appears in both editions, he cites them as ""KTU1/2.'' 2""New Readings in the Letters of ≤zn bn byy,'' in Vorträge, gehalten auf der 28. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in Wien, 6.-10. Juli,1981, AfO Beiheft 19 (1982) 39-53, esp. p. 53 note 22. 3Throughout this review, I will refer to the various verbal forms by use of the root QTL enclosed in slashes, with the necessary specifications for more narrowly defined forms, e.g., /YQTL/ = "prefix-conjugation', /QTLa/ = "suffix-conjugation', /YQTLØ/ = "prefix-conjugation with zero vowel at the end', /yaqtul-/ = "prefix- conjugation with stem vowel /u/ and no specification for mood', etc. Nominal bases will usually be indicated in lower case with the vowel(s) indicating the pattern, e.g., /qatl/ or /qitªl/. 4T., pp. 432-38 (§73.223.3). 5See my Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (Writings from the Ancient World 10; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002) 101 n. 24. Archiv für Orientforschung 50 (2003/2004) online version – 3 – syntax; morphology is presented in five sections, numbered as principal sections, viz., the pronoun, the noun, number words, verbs, and particles. The body of the work consists of an introduction, followed by these eight sections, for a total of nine. Then thirteen indices occupy over 140 pages: general abbreviations, sigla and symbols, literary abbreviations, bibliography, topical index, Ugaritic roots, non-Ugaritic roots, Ugaritic words in alphabetic script, words in syllabic (Sumero-Akkadian) script, text references by KTU/CAT numbers, text references by excavation number (""RS …''—this index is broken down into two sections, one for alphabetic texts, the other for syllabic texts), references to texts not citable by either of the two preceding systems, and, finally, references to texts from other sites. This is, therefore, a reference grammar in the best tradition, with the indices provided to make it useful (though a caveat is necessary on these—see below). One aspect of this book that deserves special praise is the extent to which the data from the administrative texts have been integrated into the grammar. T. is not simply aware of the existence of these texts, but has studied them in detail, has elsewhere already made significant contributions to their interpretation,6 and makes them a major part of this grammar. Gone are the days when a Ugaritic grammar was devoted primarily to the mythological texts. Another source of data exploited significantly here are the syllabic writings of Ugaritic words. The basic work along these lines was done by J. Huehnergard7 and W. H. van Soldt,8 but T. is at pains to include all such data and to draw conclusions from them for Ugaritic phonology.