A Letter in Ugaritic Dialect

Abstract

THE short and rather laconic letter PRU II No. 20 (Gordon 1020) has been dealt with recently by DeMoor, although in a cursory fashion.' He observes that the language of the letter is peculiar, diverging in some ways from standard late Ugaritic. The interpretation of the text is, as DeMoor notes, extremely difficult. There are, for example, no word-dividers to indicate the structure of the sentences; and the style of the letter is so economical that its meaning is always elusive. These difficulties notwithstanding, the letter is a unique specimen of late Ugaritic prose in that it exhibits numerous differences in lexicon, morphology, and phonology from the standard dialect; and it merits special attention on the part of those interested in the historical development of Ugaritic and the Northwest Semitic dialects of the second millennium B.c.2 The interpretation offered in this study is admittedly problematic in view of the considerable difficulty presented by the text. Nevertheless, I hope to have made some headway in its analysis.