The publication of the third edition of A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition is an important and welcome development for scholars and students of Northwest Semitic philology. As heir to the pioneering works of Ugaritic lexicography undertaken in the mid-twentieth century, Joseph Aistleitner's Wörterbuch der ugaritischen Sprache (Berlin, 1963, revised 1965, 1967) and the glossary in Cyrus Gordon's Ugaritic Textbook (Rome, 1965, revised 1998), del Olmo Lete and Sanmartín's work is the only exhaustive twenty-first-century reference dictionary of Ugaritic (alongside Josef Tropper's excellent but much less detailed Kleines Wörterbuch des Ugaritischen (Wiesbaden, 2008)). The dictionary was originally published in Spanish as Diccionario de la Lengua Ugarítica (1996, vol. 1; 2000, vol. 2), with the first English edition (translated by Wilfred G.E. Wilson) appearing in 2003. The second English edition, which came out in 2004, does not constitute a revised version but rather a reprint with some minor emendations and corrections. Since its original publication the dictionary has become an indispensable resource, as it cites every known Ugaritic lexeme along with etymological and comparative information; attested grammatical forms (e.g. the construct, dual/plural, and suffixed forms of nouns, feminine and plural forms of adjectives, and the various conjugations and stems of verbal roots); forms attested in syllabic cuneiform; detailed examples drawn from Ugaritic texts; and numerous bibliographic references.
In contrast to the second edition, the newly released third edition constitutes a substantially revised version, carried out more than a decade after the publication of the original English translation. The revisions take various forms. First, the authors have made some technical and aesthetic improvements such as correcting typographical errors and standardizing the translations of text samples given throughout the dictionary; similarly, the new edition benefits from a clearer layout, with lemmata and grammatical information more prominently highlighted than previously.
Second, the bibliography has been updated, with the addition of references to recent key Ugaritic resources, such as John Huehnergard's Ugaritic Vocabulary in Syllabic Transcription (Winona Lake, IN, 2008), Josef Tropper's Kleines Wörterbuch des Ugaritischen (Wiesbaden, 2008) and Ugaritische Grammatik (Münster, 2012), and Pierre Bordreuil and Dennis Pardee's Manual of Ugaritic (Winona Lake, IN, 2009); similarly, the new edition includes data from texts published in the RSOu 18 excavation campaigns conducted between 1994 and 2002 (including legal documents, letters, and lists).
Third, the etymological and comparative Semitic data found in the previous editions has been supplemented with additional languages such as Old South Arabian and Syriac. Conversely, the authors have removed some extraneous comparative information; for example, under the lemma mt (III) ‘man’ (vol. 2: 590), various spellings of Eblaite personal names containing this element that appeared in the second edition (vol. 2: 598) have been omitted (though the reference to a source in which they can be found has been retained).
Fourth, the new edition provides more detailed treatment of ambiguous vocabulary (a perennial problem plaguing students of Ugaritic given the language's poor attestation) and offers a greater number of alternative definitions. For example, the authors gloss mlḥmt as ‘war’ (vol. 2: 542) but cite the alternative interpretation ‘bread offerings’ in 1.3.III:15 (as proposed by Bordreuil and Pardee 2009: 329), in contrast to the second edition (vol. 2: 548), which does not include the latter reading. (Note, however, that this variant interpretation is not provided in other citations of the same excerpt; thus, when it appears under the lemma q-r-y ‘meet’; ‘present’ (vol. 2: 704), only the first translation is given). Similarly, the authors gloss bṯ in 1.2 IV 28 as ‘be ashamed’ (vol. 1: 249), from the root b-(w)-ṯ (cognate with Hebrew √בושׁ ‘be ashamed’), but provide the alternative interpretation ‘scatter’, from the root b-ṯ-ṯ, as supported by Bordreuil and Pardee (2009: 305). Again, the second edition (vol. 1: 252) does not mention the latter interpretation.
Finally, the new edition incorporates clearer acknowledgement of uncertain translations; for example, the lexeme mḫ is glossed as ‘feel exuberant’ (?) (vol. 2: 532), whereas the second edition (vol. 2: 538–9) lacked the question mark indicating the doubtfulness of the reading. (See Adam Miglio's 2009 review of the second edition, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 68/1, 51–2, for discussion of its occasional failure to indicate questionable meanings.)
The changes incorporated into the new edition are overwhelmingly positive; one extremely minor exception to this trend might be the decision to remove the original foreword, which provided a short overview of the history of Ugaritic lexicographical scholarship that could have been useful for readers of the new version lacking access to the previous editions.
Like its predecessors, the third edition of the dictionary is an invaluable tool for anyone with an interest in Ugaritic, and the improvements to the layout, accuracy, and comprehensiveness are such that it will be of benefit to owners of the first or second edition as well as to new users. The only real drawback to the dictionary remains its high price, which renders it relatively inaccessible to many potential readers, particularly students. It is to be hoped that Brill will decide to issue a paperback version, which would make this essential work more affordable for those wishing to acquire it.
