An Introduction to Ugaritic

I was a bit disappointed in flipping through John Huehnergard's Ugaritic introduction after I used his excellent Akkadian grammar textbook. As much as I enjoy John's concise style of presenting the material, this entire book comes with only three sets of exercises for the whole book, each set of exercises covers way too much grammar to be remembered at once and is way less didactic than his Akkadian Grammar tome. It would greatly benefit from a new edition that would give lots substitution and conjugation drills with each new step of grammar taught so the reader could much better absorb the material better. He deserves kudos though using actual Ugaritic cuneiform and teaching on the topic in this book.

Huehnergard's resources always provide a good basis for the language and the classical linguistic relationships. However, unlike Huehnergard's Manual of Akkadian, this book is far more concise, and is not structured well for a class (or chunked rather into sessions). Instead there are two fairly long chapters that cover most of the grammatical concepts, then you're thrown at a few texts, with a very brief glossary and very little autographs (but photos of the tablets are also provided for nearly all texts).He does a great service to his learners by providing a key in the back to all exercises in the book, but again, there just aren't that many. Keeping in mind this is a first edition, it definitely helps provide another useful resource in the field of Ugaritology and should be picked up by any students interested in the field.

Definitely a great piece of work by the giant in Comparative Semitics. Those who complain about its concise style should read the preface where it is clearly stated that the Introduction is meant to be a précis of grammar for students familiar with Biblical Hebrew. Therefore, this should never been compared to the Akkadian one, which is indeed a textbook.

Yes, it's a very good book. I'm jus reading it. The historical, antropoplogical and religious aspects about Ugarit are not difficult to understand them We can just make a link to Hebrew subjects.Thnks and so long to other book.Att., José Antônio Petrucci

Great

Wonderful book. However, you must know the language before studying with this book....

Great Item!!!!

It is a dense masterpiece, definitely to be tackled only if you have some base in semitic languages. The few exercices featuring pictures, transcripts and translations are a nice asset. Not really a lesson-oriented book however, so it offers a less intuitive, slow-paced or seducing learning path as J. Huehnergard's Grammar of Akkadian (which was the main reason for me to purchase this one). If reading a grammar inside-out isn't your thing, you'll probably find it very dry.