El in the Ugaritic Texts

The author of this study has become favorably known for a number of good essays and some excellent papers read before the American Oriental Society. His work stands in pleasing contrast to many studies in the field of Ugaritic religion and mythology, which tend to lack linguistic control of the texts — an absolutely necessary prerequisite in dealing with a language still in the process of being interpreted grammatically and lexically. For instance, one scholar overlooks basic phonetic considerations, disregarding a century of serious scientific work in this field. Another may respect phonetic requirements, but tries to identify obscure words with words taken ad hoc from the dictionary of Classical Arabic, without paying attention to cognates in the other languages or to the history of the word-groups in question. A third forgets that translations from Ugaritic texts must make sense in the light of our present knowledge of the ancient East.