Kleines Worterbuch des Ugaritischen.

• Position: Book review

Kleines Worterbuch des Ugaritischen. By JOSEF TROPPER. Elementa Linguarum Orientis, vol. 4. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2008. Pp. xv + 193. [euro] 29.80 (paper).

During the past few years, a number of comprehensive works on Ugaritic lexicography have seen the light of day and offer easy access to the results of an arcane discipline. The purpose of this one, as outlined in preface and introduction, is twofold. On the one hand, the author wants to provide a pedagogical tool pitched towards beginners by concentrating on texts "which are usually read at university," vocalizing the individual lexemes, and providing only the allegedly most relevant etymological data for that particular target group. On the other, he claims that his personal interpretations of the passages included turn this glossary, with certain limits, into a "scholarly reference work" supplementing the standard dictionary by G. del Olmo Lete and J. Sanmartin (DUL). Given the amount of energy Tropper has devoted to Ugaritic in the past, such an immodest assertion is understandable from a human point of view. Regrettably though, the outcome does not quite live up to the expectations the reader has from someone who has worked with this material for about twenty years. Tropper should have chosen only one of the two rather incompatible goals aspired to and reflected carefully upon how best to achieve it at the outset, because writing a serviceable dictionary requires much more thinking than he seems to have imagined. Already the first twenty pages reflect all the major and minor flaws pointed out almost one hundred years ago by F. Delitzsch, "Philologische Forderungen an die hebraische Lexikographie," MVAG 20.5 (1915).

First, the corpus underlying the present word-list--which is never specified precisely--evokes questions. The approximately two thousand entries, all arranged according to a modified Latin order of letters, cover words mostly taken from epic and ritual poetry, but also from economic texts, scribal exercises, and vocabularies in syllabic cuneiform. Letters, by contrast, are less well represented, despite their prominence in introductory classes. Hence, the reader fails to learn that in these texts the ubiquitous ah mostly does not mean "brother" but "peer," yet he would be able to discover that the extremely rare word [att.sub.2], occurring only in the list of names KTU 4.153, means "belt" (at least according to a number of scholars). Tropper appears to have rather odd ideas as to which pieces usually ("gewohnlich") feature in introductory Ugaritic classes. The full glossaries in J. Gibson's Canaanite Myths and Legends and especially P. Bordreuil's and D. Pardee's Manuel d'ougaritique prove to be superior, because they are based on actual...