Cuneiform Alphabets from Syria and Palestine

In this book devoted to various types of cuneiform alphabets from the Late Bronze age found in Ugarit and other sites in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, M. Dietrich and O. Loretz deal with the texts in the "short alphabet" and the alphabet tablet of Bet Šemeš, which exhibits the South Arabian sequence of letters. Theirs is a carefully documented presentation of material, and its conclusions are well substantiated. While the authors appropriately concentrated on the cuneiform alphabetic evidence, this review article applies some analogies from other areas in discussing relationships of phonemes and graphemes, invention of signs, position of additional letters, and some other topics. This reviewer considers the "long alphabet" original and the short one to be a secondary development.