Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications
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204
THE ALPHABET
connection with the Sumerian-Babylonian-Assyrian cuneiform writing except that they were impressed in a similar way with a stylus on claytablets; the direction of writing was the same, from left to right, unlike the North Semitic alphabet. A few texts may be dated in the fifteenth century B.C., but it is difficult to fix the date of the origin of the script; possibly in the sixteenth century. The use of this writing seems to have ceased in the thirteenth century B.C., although we have evidence only for its existence in the fourteenth. We cannot know how far the use of the Ugarit alphabet or the knowledge of it spread, but a clay-tablet found in Beth-Shemesh, with a short inscription in the same script, written in reverse, and a bronze tablet written in the same script, and found in Lower Galilee, suggest that it may have been known over a wider area.
Externally, only six signs of the Ugarit alphabet resemble North Semitic letters having the same phonetic values (Fig. 102, 4.)
Among the theories dealing with the origin of this alphabet, the most natural one is that it was invented by a native who knew the North Semitic alphabet, but was accustomed to the use of clay and stylus which were not adaptable to the writing of linear letters. From the former he borrowed the idea of an alphabet for consonantal writing; from the latter he imitated the wedge-shaped elements, which he arranged in various simple combinations. At any rate, it is probable that the cuneiform alphabet is definitely invented, not adapted from another system, as suggested by some scholars, although direct evidence is wanting. The late German scholar Bauer thought that the Ugarit alphabet was invented for a non-Semitic tongue. According to the French orientalist Dunand, the inventor of the cuneiform alphabet certainly knew the Byblos alphabetic script (see below), but did not adopt it probably for political reasons.
Amongst the various problems connected with the Ugarit alphabet, which cannot be explained satisfactorily, the most important is that this cuneiform alphabet contains 32 signs, while the North Semitic alphabet contains 22 symbols only; for instance, instead of the one N.-Sem, aleph, there are in the Ras Shamrah alphabet three alephs (symbols Nos. 1, 2, 3 in Fig. 104, 1), for the sounds 'a, 'i-'e, and 'u-'o; there is a sign for the sound zh, the French j (No. 31), and seven other additional signs (Nos. 7, 12, 20, 22, 25, 29, 30) for sounds which in later Phoenician and Hebrew were amalgamated with related sounds, but are kept separated in Arabic. Of these nine additional symbols, the first three are thought to have been added because of the fact that this alphabet was used also for a nonSemitic language (Hurrian); while the other surplus symbols are considered as a proof that the Ugarit alphabet was invented before the N.-Sem. alphabet was stabilized.
C. H. Gordon, Ugaritic Grammar, Rome, Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1940, is a handy and comprehensive manual on all the problems connected with the Ugarit script.
