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The Ugaritic Texts and the Origins of West Semitic Literary Composition, by Dennis Pardee 366 F Journal of Near Eastern Studies generation of your generation’ = ‘You shall take your preposition is entirely absent from Ugaritic (mn in eternal kingship, your sovereignty that will continue the text just discussed must be an indefinite pronoun) from generation to generation’) and when gener- and it is clearly marginal in Phoenician, where, with ated by context (e.g., in the administrative text RIH few exceptions, it functions as a compounding ele- 78/02, where the genitive use of d is generated by ment with other prepositions (e.g., l + mn, ‘from’) and the omission of ksp in the second phrase: ʾšrm ksp ktnt never independently as a subordinator at the clausal w ḥmšt d pwt /ʿašrāma kaspu kutunāti wa ḫamišatu level. The presence of min(u) in third-millennium dū puwwati/ ‘Twenty silver of garments and five of Eblaite, of which the exact linguistic classification is madder’ = ‘Twenty shekels’ worth of kutunu-type gar- debated, leaves little doubt as to the antiquity of the ments and five shekels’ worth of madder’). preposition; its absence from Ugarit is all the more An example of disagreement: the identification striking. It appears necessary to include a geographi- of mn in RS 34.124:22 as a preposition can only be cal component in outlining its history: it is first at- termed nonsensical, particularly in the author’s own tested in central Syria, then, much later, in Aramaic syntactic analysis of the clause. The clause p mn lı͗ kt and Hebrew, later still in the Arabian and Ethiopian a͗ nk lḥt is parsed as follows: conjunction + preposition languages. It is debatable whether it existed in Proto- meaning “from” + noun meaning “letter” + pronoun Phoenician. In any case, the vectors of transmission + verb meaning “send”; the translation is “. I will are, for the most part, missing. send a short letter” (49). Note that the author does And an example of a strange rendering: Ugaritic not propose that the preposition was compounded spr is translated “book,” both in the line devoted to with the conjunction p and that the compound func- linguistic analysis and in the final translation (p. 92). tioned as an expression of subordination (‘after I Because there were no books in the Late Bronze Age send/because I sent . .’)— which would be super- and the word refers to a relatively brief ‘text’ inscribed ficially plausible because there is no lexical marker of on a tablet, the use of the term is difficult to under- transition to the next clause/sentence. To the contrary stand. Although the author clearly wishes to orient her and as is expected, the clause in question is taken as discussion for linguists, some of whom might know the apodosis to the preceding clause, which is intro- little about the Semitic languages, all readers should duced by the conditional conjunction ı͗ m. In any case, at least have an historical outline of these languages it appears safe to say that no serious Ugaritologist in mind as well as an outline of the history of writing would today accept that lı͗ kt be taken as a noun and and of document production. lḥt as a verb: the latter is simply the Ugaritic word As is well known to all who have had the temerity corresponding to Hebrew lūaḥ, ‘tablet’, and the for- to attempt synthetic work on grammar, whether of mer the 1c.s. suffix-conjugation form of the standard a single language, of a group of related languages, Ugaritic verb LʾK, ‘to send’, hence ‘I, yes I, have sent or of a grammatical theme that takes into account a tablet (= letter)’. Strangely enough, the author cites one or more languages, the moves from phonology only this passage for the existence of the preposition to morphology to morpho-syntax to syntax, whether mn in Ugaritic, making no allusion to the other cases at the clause and sentence level or at the discourse that have been claimed over the years as containing level, involve increasing complexity simply because of this elusive preposition, but she has already asserted the increasing number of variables. The author of the above that this preposition must be “common West present work is to be congratulated, therefore, for Semitic” because “All West Semitic languages use the the courage to take on three distinct syntactic themes same preposition [i.e., mn] to express temporal/causal within the Aramaic dialects as informed by Compara- subordination” (p. 33). The supporting assertion is, tive Semitics and to have isolated the peculiar Aramaic in the light of present evidence, surely false, for the contribution to the linguistic analysis of these themes. The Ugaritic Texts and the Origins of West Semitic Literary Composition. By Dennis Pardee. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. x + 149 + 5 plates. $60 (cloth). REVIEWED by JUAN-PABLO VITA, CSIC-ILC, Madrid This book is the outcome of the three Schweich Lec- the British Academy in 2007. The first chapter, “Al- tures on Biblical Archaeology given by the author at phabetic Origins,” is subdivided into two main sec- This content downloaded from 161.111.075.018 on January 24, 2020 04:34:07 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Book Reviews F 367 tions: “The Ugaritic Language and its Place among The chapter closes with general descriptions of the the Semitic Languages” and “Ugaritic Literature and characteristics of literary Ugaritic, of the various cycles its Place among the West Semitic Literatures.” In the of literary texts (the Cycle of Baal, the Epic of Kirta, first section, after a short history of the decipherment the Legend of Aqhat, as well as lesser literary texts) of Ugaritic, there is a general overview of the phono- and with an introductory comparison of the broad logical inventory of that language and of the graphic literary categories attested in the Hebrew Bible with inventory of its alphabet. There follows a discussion those known in Ugaritic (an aspect that will be the ob- of the cuneiform shape and the origin of the signs of ject of more detailed analysis in chapter 3). Through- this alphabet (an adaptation of the linear script), and out this chapter, several Ugaritic texts are set out and of its chronology (the author favors some time during discussed: RS 15.039 (an administrative document), the first half of the thirteenth century). Then the three RS 94.2168 (a legal text), RS 29.093 (a letter), RS types of cuneiform alphabet used (the ‘standard’ inven- [Varia 14] (a legal text), as well as the letters from tory of thirty signs, a ‘short’ alphabet, and yet another Mari A. 1968 and A. 1858. arranged in the order known from South Semitic) are In chapter 2, “Ugaritic Literary Composition,” the briefly described. Next, the author focuses on a gen- author has decided to focus on the scribe Ilimilku and eral description of Ugaritic, in order to show that it is the Baal Cycle. As it has reached us, this composition distinct from any of the other principal West Semitic comprises six tablets edited by this scribe (CTA 1–6). languages. The main characteristics of phonology, The five colophons composed by Ilimilku are analyzed morphology and the lexicon as well as the classifica- in detail, as are the prosopography of his name, the pos- tion of Ugaritic are discussed, with particular atten- sible date of the scribe (Pardee prefers a date towards tion to its relationships with Akkadian, Canaanite and the end of the thirteenth century), the fact that no du- Amorite. This section also briefly introduces the scribe plicates of these poems have been preserved, Ilimilku’s Ilimilku, who is discussed in more detail in chapter 2. dual character as both scribe and oral poet, etc. The second section explores the Amorite (Mari) The chapter then focuses on “The Baal Cycle as a roots of the Ugaritic literary texts, as well as the Eblaite Work of Art.” After presenting the Ugaritic letter RS connections of the Baal Myth. At various points, it also 34.124 as an example of epistolary rhetoric, it ana- reconsiders the problem of the chronology of the Uga- lyzes CTA 2:i:11′–41′ to show how the exchange of ritic script, emphasizing that the writing system must messages provided the structure of that literary work. have been invented in the thirteenth century and that, Next, it considers the rhetorical function of parallel- as a result, Ugaritic must be a language documented ism in old Northwest Semitic poetry and the close over at least about six decades and at most about a relationship between letters and the descriptions of century and a half. Information is provided on the sending a message as given in narrative. number of texts found at Ugarit (approximately 2,000 In the section “The Stories about Ba‘lu as a ‘Cycle’,” in Ugaritic, 2,500 in Akkadian), on the many different the author discusses the important question of the pos- areas of the use of Ugaritic and Akkadian in Ugarit, and sible sequence of the tablets narrating this story (CTA on the training of the Ugaritian scribes (“It is clear that 1–6). His conclusions can be summarized as follows. to become a scribe at Ugarit one had to go through a In all likelihood, CTA 3 and 4 were sequential, based Mesopotamian curriculum,” p. 29). Alongside Ilimilku, on data of a literary nature provided by the join con- who is more well-known (he put into writing the tablets necting CTA 3 with 8 (identified by Pardee in 2006), of the Danel/Aqhat Legend, of the Kirta Epic and of and here the author transcribes and translates the rele- the Baal Myth), Ṯab’ilu gradually emerges as one of the vant passages from CTA 3, 4 and 8.
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