Diccionario de la Lengua Ugaritica: vol. 1.

• Author: Parker, Simon B.
• Position: Review

volume 1. By G. DEL OLMO LETE and J. SANMARTIN. Aula Orientalis, Supplement, vol. 7. Sabadell: EDITORIAL AUSA, 1996. Pp. xxvii + 250. Pt 4,904.

The growth of Ugaritic lexicography was initially marked by the successive editions of C. H. Gordon's grammar (1940, 1947, 1955), culminating in the Ugaritic Textbook (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1965; revised imprint, 1998). The one rival to the "glossary" of this work was J. Aistleitner, Worterbuch der ugaritischen Sprache (Berlin: Akademische Verlag, 1963; 2d ed., 1965), a work with more glosses, but also with more ill-founded glosses. Since 1965, hundreds of additional texts have been published, and another generation of Ugaritologists has refined and advanced our understanding of the Ugaritic lexicon. This more recent research was promoted by the founding in 1969 of the journal Ugarit-Forschungen and subsequently of others concerned with Semitic or Northwest Semitic philology (e.g., Aula Orientalis, Maarav, Studi epigrafici e linguistici). Ugaritic lexical studies are scattered through these and other journals.

Now the distinguished scholar G. del Olmo Lete and his able colleague J. Sanmartin have produced the first half (extending through the letter "l") of a completely new Ugaritic dictionary. Its textual basis is the second edition of KTU (CAT), occasional divergences from that text being marked by "!." The compilers have moved from the West Semitic alphabetic order favored in earlier dictionaries to that of the Latin alphabet used in such models as the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary and W. Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Ge ez (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1991), with and appearing as the first two letters before "b."

A brief introduction lays out the form and principles of the dictionary. Entries include not only regular words (independent morphemes), but also dependent morphemes (e.g., the pronominal suffixes) and proper nouns (whether Ugaritic or not). The latter are not normally glossed, although meanings are often suggested by reference to other entries and/or by bibliographical references. All Ugaritic words in alphabetic cuneiform are included, even if they occur in Hurrian texts. Where the meaning of a word is disputed the authors give first what they consider the most solidly based gloss and then others judged plausible or possible. Bibliographical entries refer the reader to (normally only the most recent) arguments for disputed meanings. Verbs are listed by root; nouns are...