RAS SHAMRA— HARRIS 495 



representing ['ama'idu] "I increased (?)" shows, as do other forms too, 

 that the vowel of the prefix in the derived stems (except the i-stems ; 

 this is Piel) was [a], and that the stem vowel of the Piel was [i], so that 

 tkbd "she honored" was probably pronounced [takabbidu]. The 

 alephs have further served to indicate unexpected sound changes 

 which have occurred in the language of Ugarit, as when the word for 

 "head", which we would expect to be [ra'Su], written ras, is found 

 as ris. 



At times the consonants, too, show unexpected things about the 

 language; it is when we come upon such an unexpected form and are 

 able, in conformity with our other Imowledge, to explain why it should 

 be so, that we feel we are not merely reading into the texts what we 

 happen already to know about Semitic, but are correctly interpreting 

 the new evidence. Thus a problem is posed when we find the word 

 "eighteen" written tmn'srh, although the final h in the cognate word 

 in Hebrew is always regarded as a vowel letter, and we know there 



Figure 2. — Adze-head fouud at Ras Shamra. (The inscription in the Usaritic language 

 reads A>'?h rb khnm> "axe of the chief of priests.") (From Dussaud, D^couvertes.) 



are no vowel letters in Ugaritic. But further consideration shows that 

 even in Hebrew there are indications that this is no ordinary vowel 

 letter but the reflex of some old consonantal sound ; the Ugaritic form 

 fits neatly into this understanding. Similarly scholars were unable to 

 understand some of the occurrences of the letter d, in such phrases as 

 rgm d tim', where rgm means "word" and t§m' "you will hear"; but 

 these difficulties disappeared when it was realized that the Semitic 

 sound d, which became z in Hebrew, had become d in Ugaritic (coalesc- 

 ing with Semitic d proper), so that some of the (^-letters were to read as 

 reflexes of Semitic d; in this case it is the relative "which" (Hebrew 

 ze, Arabic du): "any word which you may hear." 



In this manner the grammar — the structure and system of the 

 language — can be worked out. Many words are interpreted by aid of 

 context, as in the simple case of the word for "sun" sps (instead of the 

 usual Semitic smS), which was understood through its occurrence in 

 the phrase sps wyrh "* * * and moon." But the chief aid to the 

 understanding of the texts and the language, especially in the poems, 

 is the well-known poetic construction of parallelism. It is almost 

 always possible to work out the poetic form even of obscure passages, 

 and if one half of a parallel couplet is understood, we know what to 

 expect in the second half. 



