Mary E. Buck: The Amorite Dynasty of Ugarit: Historical Implications of Linguistic and Archaeological Parallels. (Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant.) xiii, 376 pp. Leiden: Brill, 2020. ISBN 978 90 04 41510 2.

Abstract

Stemming from the author's doctoral dissertation (University of Chicago, 2018), this volume illuminates the origins of the Late Bronze Age (LB) polity of Ugarit, especially as it emerged from the civilizational changes at the start of Middle Bronze. Buck argues that Late Bronze Age Ugarit originated as one of several Amorite kingdoms that diffused in Syria in the second millennium BCE.Chapter 1 surveys theories of Ugarit's origins, focusing on the competing hypotheses that it derives from a Canaanite or Amorite background. To contribute to the debate, Buck proposes a historical linguistic approach to assess the filiation of LB Ugaritic alongside archaeological comparison to contextualize Ugaritic material culture among other, roughly contemporary, assemblages. She details the background to the (re-)emergence of Ugarit after the Early Bronze Age (EB) in chapter 2, with a history of scholarship on the question of middle bronze age re-urbanization, favouring a hybrid model of exogenous and endogenous explanations. She also reviews the debate on the linguistic classification of Ugaritic, establishing her commitment to the use of shared innovations alone for linguistic subgrouping, which requires attention also to historical circumstance. Chapter 3 continues the introductory material by defining the terms "Canaanite", "Amorite", and "Ugaritic", briefly tracing their ancient usage and circumscribing their geographical boundaries. "Canaan" in LB documents was treated as a political entity with a well-defined territory distinct from Ugarit. "Canaanite" was not used as an ethnic term among peoples of Canaan, in contrast to "Amorite", which is defined by a kin-based affiliation known in the MB Syrian kingdoms of Mari, Qaṭna, and Yamḫad. Here, Buck also elaborates on the linguistic corpora, emphasizing that our knowledge of Amorite derives entirely from personal names. She proposes advancing our understanding of Amorite and its relevance to classifying Ugaritic by seeking to differentiate a western dialect of Amorite, confining her study to Amorite names attested in MB Yamḫad and Qaṭna, yielding a corpus of approximately 850 names deriving primarily from Tuttul and Alalaḫ. This evidence comprises a "language group" that Buck calls "Western Amorite".In chapters 4 and 5, Buck shifts from background to analysis. Chapter 4 aims to determine whether any other material assemblages resemble that of MBIIb-LBI Ugarit. Buck isolates five features ("fortifications, palace organizational system, migdāl temple construction, glyptic evidence, and . . . the ritual use of donkeys" (p. 117)) and maps their distribution. Only Alalaḫ shares all five features; Mari, Ebla, Qaṭna, Hazor, and Megiddo attest four. Buck argues that these overlaps are best explained by migrationmost likely of Amorites, since some comparable sites have explicit Amorite identity, some Ugaritic myths may allude to Amorite heritage, and (anticipating the next chapter) the Ugaritic language demonstrates affinity with Amorite.