Ugaritic alphabet

Note: This article contains special characters.

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. 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, that gave rise to the alphabetic orders of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets on the one hand, and of the Ethiopic alphabet on the other.

Letters

𐎀 ʾa Alpa
𐎁 b Beta
𐎂 g Gamla
𐎃 ẖ Kha
𐎄 d Delta
𐎅 h Ho
𐎆 w Wo
𐎇 z Zeta
𐎈 ḥ Hota
𐎉 ṭ Tet
𐎊 y Yod
𐎋 k Kaf
𐎌 š Shin
𐎍 l Lamda
𐎎 m Mem
𐎟 ḏ Dhal
𐎐 n Nun
𐎑 ẓ Zu
𐎒 s Samka
𐎓 ʿ Ain
𐎔 p Pu
𐎕 ṣ Sade
𐎖 q Qopa
𐎗 r Rasha
𐎘 ṯ Thanna
𐎙 ġ Ghain
𐎚 t To
𐎛 ʾi I
𐎜 ʾu U
𐎝 s₂ Su
𐎞 (unassigned)
𐎟 word divider

Abecedaries

Ugaritic is found in two alphabetic orders, the Northen Semitic order found in the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman scripts, and the Southern Semitic order found in the Ethiopic scripts. The letters are given in transcription and in their Hebrew cognates; letters missing from Hebrew are left blank.

North Semitic (the abjad)

South Semitic

Ugaritic in Unicode

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

External link

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

Special characters