In Ugaritic this week we discussed our vocalization and translation of KTU 2.16. At lines four and five we ran into an issue that produced a good fifteen minutes of conversation on the various possibilities. I should make a disclaimer at this point that I have less than one semester of Ugaritic under my belt, so it is entirely possible that I will make some painfully stupid and unlearned remark in this post–I beg your forgiveness in advance. For those who don’t have the Ugaritic text handy, I’ve reproduced the two lines in question below:

2.16:4 – yšlm . lk . ily
2.16:5 – ugrt . tǵrk

The issue basically revolves around ily. In class we came up with a variety of possibilities on how to put these two lines together. It seems obvious that lines 1-3 are the introduction, and so we don’t need to worry about finding the subject of line four in line three. It also seemed plain to everyone in class that line six began a new clause. The question is, how should one take ily? That is, should it be vocalized as a plural or singular? What is the final y? Is it actually in construct with ugrt in line 5? Here are some of the possibilities we came up with:

1. The y is gentilic – I’m not sure how a gentilic makes sense in reference to the gods, but someone threw it out as a possibility.
2. The y is a mater – This would make sense, except that my understanding is that there is no agreement among scholars on whether or not mater letters exist in Ugaritic (I’m actually inclined to say that a majority say that Ugaritic does not have them, but I could be completely off base there).
3. The y is a textual corruption – This just seems like throwing ones hands up and saying “I don’t know!” but it is certainly a possibility, I suppose.
4. Enclitic y on analogy with enclitic m – Professor Kline actually proposed this as a possibility, though I don’t know enough about Ugaritic yet to make a judgment on the likelihood.
5. The y is the 1cs personal pronoun – This was actually how I had taken it in the first place, and others had done the same.

The majority of the class favored one of the first four explanations and translated: “May it be well to you. May the gods of Ugarit guard you.” A small minority favored the fifth option and translated “May my god grant welfare/health/wellness to you. May Ugarit guard you.” This second option obviously only works if Ugarit is grammatically feminine.

I know many of you who read The Floppy Hat are far more knowledgeable of Ugaritic than I am. I’d love your thoughts on this section of text. How would you explain ily? What would your rough translation look like?