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The Ugaritic personal name ʿAbdīmilku is presented in an attempt to lay out a working template for onomastic and prosopographic research on the corpus of texts from Ras Shamra–Ugarit and the nearby site of Ras Ibn Hani. Most of the names attested in these texts appear in various types of administrative documents (economic, epistolary, legal) inscribed in the local script, alphabetic cuneiform, or in the script used internationally in the Late Bronze Age, logo-syllabic cuneiform. That name was chosen because it is well attested in texts set down in the two scripts, and a good proportion of the texts include one or more of the features useful in prosopographic identification: patronym or other family relationships, geographical or professional affiliation, and textual or archaeological data permitting an approximate dating of the text itself.

The absence of detailed overviews of the textual evidence for determining the meaning of the terms designating six professional groups (sometimes called ‘corporations’) in the Ugaritic economic text RS 8.272 and their function in Ugaritic society has inspired the preparation of such overviews. This is the third, following on studies of the textual data for the khnm, ‘priests’ (Pardee 2022a) and for the qdšm, ‘holy ones’ (Pardee 2022b). As in the previous installments, this study narrows the focus of most treatments of mercantile activity at ancient Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra) down to the actual attestations of the Ugaritic term mkr and the logo-syllabic equivalents {LÚ.DAM.GÀR} and tamkāru. The references to merchants of Ugaritic origin are examined in detail; mentions of merchants of other origins in the texts from Ras Shamra-Ugarit are covered only briefly. This narrower focus has provided a somewhat sharper view of some aspects of the organization and functioning of individuals and groups exercising mercantile activity within the kingdom of Ugarit and in neighboring regions.

The absence of detailed overviews of the textual evidence for determining the meaning of the terms designating six professional groups (sometimes called ‘corporations’) in the Ugaritic economic text RS 8.272 and their function in Ugaritic society has inspired the preparation of such overviews. This is the second, following on a study of the textual data for the khnm, ‘priests’ (Pardee 2022), and it deals with the qdš, plural qdšm, ‘holy one(s)’, plausibly vocalized /qadišu//qadišūmu/, a class of cultic personnel. This study proposes tentatively that the qdšm were at Ugarit the primary cultic operators who acted under the direction of the priests, whose primary role was administrative.

The proposal is here offered to read the Ugaritic administrative text RS 10.052 iv 1 as containing the personal name pǵmw, the Ugaritic writing of the Luwian name Piḫamuwa.

This article presents material, palaeographic, and epistolographic arguments in support of the hypothesis that two epistolary fragments recovered at the site of Raʾs Šamra in 1954—RS 18.286[A] and RS 18.[400]—originally belonged to a single tablet. Similar data suggest that the fragment RS 18.286[B], long thought to belong to the same tablet as RS 18.286[A], cannot in fact be accepted to have originated from this tablet. The reconfiguration of these fragments results in new interpretive possibilities and leads us to believe that the tablet of which RS 18.286[A] and RS 18.[400] comprise two parts originally bore a message from the queen to her son—the only such letter in our possession and hence a potentially important addition to our knowledge of Ugaritic epistolary protocol within the royal family.

This article explores how knowledge was created, acquired, organized, and transmitted in writing by scholars and intellectuals in the kingdom of Ugarit on the Mediterranean coast of Syria, best documented for the thirteenth century BC, with special attention to the social, cultural and political backgrounds against which such literary activities were pursued.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the history of interpretation of the Ugaritic term tḥm, used in literary texts to designate an oral message, in letters to designate a message set down on a clay tablet for purposes of transmission by a messenger. The process leading to the interpretation ‘word, message’ for tḥm is described first, then the attempts at etymological explanation of the term. A consensus was rapidly reached in the first area, but none exists in the latter.

Following up on two studies of Ugaritic texts signed by a scribe named Ṯabʾilu, the proposal is offered here that the well-known poetic work chanting the marriage between the gods Yariḫu and Nikkalu is by the same scribe. The first part is devoted to the epigraphic argument while the second deals with the principal philological and literary matters. In an appendix, four fragments found in the same area of the mound of Ras Shamra are (re-)edited.

A new inscription from Zincirli dating in all likelihood to the third quarter of the eighth century B.C.E. adds significant new data, linguistic, religious, and historical, to our knowledge of the kingdom of Sam?al in the period that immediately preceded Barrakib's submission to Assyrian hegemony (KAI 216). The excellent state of preservation of the inscribed stele makes the superficial decipherment relatively straightforward. The interpretation, on the other hand, presents challenges at various levels.

Il est proposé dans cette étude d’identifier une tablette découverte en 1955 dans le palais royal de Ras Shamra – Ougarit (RS 19.039) et une autre découverte en 1998 à quelques kilomètres dans le palais nord de Ras Ibn Hani (RIH 98/02) comme étant de la main d’un seul et même scribe. En attendant de donner la publication définitive du nouveau texte de Ras Ibn Hani, il apparaît opportun qu’une réédition du texte de Ras Shamra soit présentée ici.

The first essay in a new series provides a bibliographic overview of this important site.

More than 20,000 tablets have been discovered at Mari (Tell Ḥarîri). This article supplies a bibliographic overview of what has been learned from them to date.

Around 2700 B.C.E., at the beginning of its Third Dynasty, Egypt seems to have severed ties with Palestine and focused its trade relations on Syria. Did it also begin a period of extended hostility towards Palestine?

The language of the Arameans, Aramaic can be traced back to about 1000 B.C.E. By the beginning of the sixth century B.C.E. it was the lingua franca of the ancient Near East.