Ugaritic alphabet

The Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform version of the Levantine consonant alphabet (abjad), used from around 1300 BC for the Ugaritic language, an extinct Canaanite language discovered in Ugarit, Syria. It has 30 distinct letters. Other languages (particularly Hurrian) were occasionally written in it in the Ugarit area, although not elsewhere.

Clay tablets written in Ugaritic provide the earliest evidence of both the Levantine and South Semitic orders of the alphabet, which gave rise to the alphabetic orders of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets on the one hand, and of the Ge'ez alphabet on the other.

The script was written from left to right.

Origin

Scholars have searched in vain for the cuneiform prototypes of the letters of the Ugaritic alphabet. However, there is circumstantial evidence that they may simply be the letters of the Semitic Canaanite alphabet, distorted by their adaptation to being written with a stylus on clay.

For example, there are two basic shapes in cuneiform: a line wedge, such as , and a corner wedge, such as . These seem to correspond to lines and circles in the linear Semitic alphabets: the three Semitic letters with circles, preserved in Greek Θ, O and Latin Q, are all made with corner wedges in Ugaritic: Tet, Ain, and Qopa. Other letters look similar as well: Ho resembles its assumed Greek cognate E, while Wo, Pu, and Thanna are similar to Greek Y, Π, and Σ turned on their sides.

Letters

		Alpa
	b	Beta
	g	Gamla
		Kha
	d	Delta
	h	Ho
	w	Wo
	z	Zeta
		Hota
		Tet
	y	Yod
	k	Kaf
	š	Shin
	l	Lamda
	m	Mem
		Dhal
	n	Nun
		Zu
	s	Samka
		Ain
	p	Pu
		Sade
	q	Qopa
	r	Rasha
		Thanna
	ġ	Ghain
	t	To
		I
		U
	s₂	Su
	(unassigned)
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Ugaritic in Unicode

In Unicode, the Ugaritic alphabet is assigned to U+10380 - U+1039F.

1038

𐎀

𐎁

𐎂

𐎃

𐎄

𐎅

𐎆

𐎇

𐎈

𐎉

𐎊

𐎋

𐎌

𐎍

𐎎

𐎟

1039

𐎐

𐎑

𐎒

𐎓

𐎔

𐎕

𐎖

𐎗

𐎘

𐎙

𐎚

𐎛

𐎜

𐎝

𐎟

Abecedaries/ ABCDaries

Lists of Ugaritic letters have been found in two alphabetic orders: the "Northern Semitic order" more similar to the one found in the Hebrew and Phoenician, and more distantly, the Greek and Latin alphabets; and the "Southern Semitic order" more similar to the one found in the South Arabian, and more distantly, the Ge'ez alphabets. The letters are given in transcription and in their Hebrew cognates; letters missing from Hebrew are left blank.

North Semitic

’a

’i

’u

ח׳

ד׳

ט׳

ע׳

שׂ

South Semitic

’

ח׳

שׂ

ט׳

ע׳

ד׳

Special Characters

External Links

Ugaritic (ancientscripts.com)
Ugaritic Cuneiform characters from the Unicode Ugaritic cuneiform script.
Ugaritic cuneiform Omniglot entry on the subject.
Download an Ugaritic Font.

Abjad writing systems | Canaanite languages

Phoenicia