Ugaritic language
The Ugaritic language is known to us only in the form of writings found in the lost city of Ugarit since its discovery by French archaeologists in 1928. It has been extremely important for scholars of the Old Testament in clarifying Hebrew texts and has revealed more of how Judaism used common phrases, literary idioms, and expressions employed by surrounding pagan cultures.
Ancient Near Eastern scholar Cyrus Gordon (The Ancient Near East, p. 99) assesses Ugaritic as "the greatest literary discovery from antiquity since the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform." Texts discovered at Ugarit include the "Legend of Keret", the "Aqhat Epic" (or "Legend of Danel"), the "Myth of Baal-Aliyan", and the "Death of Baal", all revealing a Canaanite mythology.
Ugaritic is a Semitic language written in cuneiform that was adapted for use as an alphabet. This Ugaritic alphabet, among the oldest that has been discovered, is different from all other cuneiform writings insofar as it is an alphabet rather than a syllabary. It has 30 different letters. (See the Ugaritic alphabet for an illustration.) To the casual observer, it appears very similar in appearance to Akkadian or Assyrian writing.
Ugaritic was used by a Canaanite culture, and the use of the term 'Canaanite' to refer to the Ugaritic language is sometimes found. It is closely related to the Canaanite languages. However, from the perspective of linguistic taxonomy, it is not viewed as a Canaanite language; rather, it is a close relative of the proto-language from which the languages termed Canaanite descend, and was spoken at about the same time as that language.
The best known edition of the mythological texts is John Gibson's Canaanite Myths and Legends (2nd edition, T. & T. Clark: 1977, released again 2000) ISBN 0567023516. This contains Latin-letter transcriptions of the Ugartic texts and facing translations in English.
See also
Ugarit, Ugaritic alphabet
