498 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



(in the form 2U, ze). There is no article, just as there seems to be 

 none in early Phoenician and early Hebrew. 



SYNTAX AND LITERARY FORM 



The syntax is similar to that of early Northwest Semitic, in spite 

 of the centuries which intervene between Ugaritic and the earhest 

 Phoenician and Hebrew material which we have for comparison. 

 Word order is much the same, and is set in definite forms. In the 

 ordinary sentence the verb precedes the subject, even after most 

 adverbs: [gam ya§tihu 'ilu] "Moreover II cried," But after certain 

 adverbs the order is inverted to subject-verb: ['alan(?) §ap§u ta§<lhu] 

 "Thereupon Shapsh cried out." There is also a special form subject- 

 object- verb when the subject is in casus pendens (in apposition to 

 the whole object- verb sentence): Smm ^mn tmtm nhlm ilk nhtm "The 

 heavens — oil they rained; the streams — they flowed with honey." In 

 successive sentence-phrases there are forms of verb consecution in 

 which the first verb may be in one mode and the following ones in 

 another; we are reminded of verb consecution patterns in Hebrew 

 and South Arabic. There is also an enchtic [-ma] (similar to the 

 Alvkadian?) which seems to have a conjunctive value between plirases. 



The literary form of the poems is typical Semitic. It runs largely 

 in parallel couplets — sets of two short lines, each saying much the 

 same thing — with frequent intrusion of an independent line, especially 

 introductoiy lines such as "Thus said x." The lines are measured 

 not by the number of syllables in them (as, say, in classical verse), 

 but by the number of stresses (major-stress syllables, as in Hebrew 

 and in English poetry); this type of poetic measure is naturally 

 appealing to English ears. Each short line (stichos) contains usually 

 three stresses, sometimes two or four. 



An outstanding feature here is the comparatively high development 

 of strophes — stanza arrangements — over and above the procession of 

 the parallel couplets. There has long been discussion as to how 

 much stanza-arrangement there is in the Bible, particularly in the 

 Psalms, and in the Prophets, especially Isaiah II. Early Semitic 

 epic poetry (e. g., Arabic) shows hardly any strophes, and many 

 scholars denied their existence in the Bible, wldle others insisted that 

 one could not but find them in Hebrew poetry and recitative. The 

 strophic arrangements which occur here and there in the Ugaritic 

 poems show that we should not be surprised at similar constructions 

 in Hebrew. In general, the poetic touch here is at times similar to the 

 Hebrew, and often we see the same literary and even phraseological 

 background as the Hebrew poets drew upon, witness the similarity 

 to the Bible (especially Amos 1: 3 flf.) of this sentence: [hu(?)m tane 

 dabalilma gani'a ba'lu, taldia rakibu 'urapati] "Indeed two sacrifices 

 Baal hates, tlii-ee (hates) the Rider of the Clouds." One is impressed 



