>In an article published in National Geographic, a group of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that they have developed a program that translates Ugarit by comparing written Ugarit with Hebrew.
The following is an excerpt from the article that appeared in National Geographic:
A new computer program has quickly deciphered a written language last used in Biblical times—possibly opening the door to “resurrecting” ancient texts that are no longer understood, scientists announced last week.
Created by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the program automatically translates written Ugaritic, which consists of dots and wedge-shaped stylus marks on clay tablets. The script was last used around 1200 B.C. in western Syria.
Written examples of this “lost language” were discovered by archaeologists excavating the port city of Ugarit in the late 1920s. It took until 1932 for language specialists to decode the writing. Since then, the script has helped shed light on ancient Israelite culture and Biblical texts.
Using no more computing power than that of a high-end laptop, the new program compared symbol and word frequencies and patterns in Ugaritic with those of a known language, in this case, the closely related Hebrew.
Through repeated analysis, the program linked letters and words to map nearly all Ugaritic symbols to their Hebrew equivalents in a matter of hours.
The program also correctly identified Ugaritic and Hebrew words with shared roots 60 percent of the time.
Read the article in its entirety by visiting National Geographic online.
This development is good news for scholars. The article says that the program can be adapted to translate other ancient languages. Those scholars who work with ancient languages soon will have a tool that will be invaluable in their study of ancient texts.
Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary
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Tags: Archaeology, Ugaritic, Translation, Ancient Texts
Dr. Claude Mariottini - Professor of Old Testament 