The Ugaritic Alphabet, Aleph to Dhal

Start at the head of the sequence. Aleph is first of thirty and writes a glottal stop released into a short a. Ugaritic has two further signs for the same consonant with i and u, placed near the end. The name Aleph and the ox are projected from Hebrew and Phoenician, not read off any Ugaritic source.

Beth is second and writes a voiced bilabial stop, the sound of English b. Ugaritic sources give only its order and sound, so the house it is said to picture is carried over from the Hebrew and Phoenician naming tradition.

Gimel is third and writes the g of go. It is third in Hebrew too, so the opening three places agree across the two sequences. The camel or throwing stick is again a later naming tradition, since Ugaritic assigns the sign no name.

Here the orders part. Kha is fourth and writes a voiceless fricative at the velum or uvula, like the ch of loch. Ugaritic keeps it as its own sign; Hebrew merged this sound into Heth, so Kha has no Hebrew cognate and no traditional name. Arabic keeps the same consonant as its letter Kha.

Daleth is fifth and writes the d of English. In Hebrew Daleth is fourth, a one-place shift caused by Kha taking an extra slot ahead of it in the Ugaritic order.

He is sixth and writes a voiceless glottal fricative, the h of English. The window it is sometimes said to picture is disputed among scholars even within the Hebrew and Phoenician tradition that supplies the name.

Waw is seventh and writes the semivowel w. Its hook or nail picture is carried over from Hebrew and Phoenician rather than attested for Ugaritic.

Heth is ninth, after Zayin, which this path passes over. It writes a voiceless pharyngeal fricative made well behind English h, distinct in Ugaritic from Kha. Hebrew Heth is where the Kha sound merged, which is why one Hebrew letter covers two Ugaritic signs.

Teth is tenth and writes an emphatic, pharyngealized t with a secondary throat constriction. The serpent it is said to picture belongs to the Hebrew and Phoenician naming tradition.

Kaph is twelfth, after Yod, and writes the k of English. It continues Hebrew Kaph, the palm of the hand, and sits directly before Shin, a slot Hebrew does not use in the same way.

Shin is thirteenth, the abecedary best known oddity. It sits between Kaph and Lamed near the middle rather than near the end where Hebrew and Phoenician put it. The order is what the surviving school tablets record, repeated across copies, not a guess.

Lamed is fourteenth and writes the l of English, with the ox-goad picture from the Hebrew and Phoenician tradition. It follows Shin in the Ugaritic order.

Mem is fifteenth and writes the m of English, the water of the Hebrew tradition. Hebrew mysticism later made Mem one of three mother letters; this atlas does not project that status onto the Ugaritic sign, since no Ugaritic source assigns it.

End at Dhal, sixteenth, the voiced interdental fricative of English this. Like Kha, it is a Proto-Semitic sound Ugaritic kept as its own sign while Hebrew merged it into Zayin, so it has no Hebrew cognate or surviving name. Arabic Dhal is the closer correspondence.