ABSTRACT

However we categorize it, this type of script was used to write the Ugaritic language (just one of the languages represented on the tablets from Ugarit). e scholar P.T. Daniels devised for it the name ‘abjad’, from the rst two letters of the Arabic alphabet. e signs making up the very rst, pre-Ugaritic, ‘alphabetic script’ were probably linear ones, drawn or painted onto writing surfaces. In this category we can perhaps include the (as yet unreadable) linear signs, dating to c. 1800 bc, carved on rock-faces in Egypt. But in the Ugaritic version of the script, wedge-shaped signs were used. is was clearly in imitation of the long-established cuneiform system. But the ‘alphabetic signs’ are not related, except in appearance, to the traditional cuneiform ones; rather, they are an adaptation of earlier linear signs, as evidenced by the few remaining examples we have of earlier scripts of this kind. e reason for the use of cuneiform for the Ugaritic writing system was that the script was incised on clay tablets, perhaps reecting, the scholar D. Pardee suggests, a shortage of papyrus on which a linear script could more easily have been used.