Writing and Social Diversity in Late Bronze Age Ugarit
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Authors
Publication Date
2022-04-30Journal Title
Special Issue: Ancient Lives, New Stories 2018 Conference Proceedings
ISSN
0965-9315
Publisher
UCL Press
Volume
33
Issue
1
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Boyes, P. (2022). Writing and Social Diversity in Late Bronze Age Ugarit. Special Issue: Ancient Lives, New Stories 2018 Conference Proceedings, 33 (1) https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.2041-9015.1379
Abstract
<jats:p>Writing at Ugarit has received a great deal of scholarly attention for the wide range of languages and writing systems used, and especially for the city’s distinctive alphabetic cuneiform script which accounts for around half of the inscribed material from the site. The vast majority of the rest is in the Akkadian language and logo-syllabic cuneiform script. This written material is, justifiably, usually seen as scribal, in that the vast majority stems from the state bureaucracy and from professional writers formally trained in a curriculum derived from the Mesopotamian cuneiform tradition. However, by using the blanket term ‘scribe’ we risk obscuring potential diversity in who used writing and why. This paper will explore the extent to which we can identify social diversity within writing practices at Ugarit and will focus in particular on three main areas: gender and women’s literacy; social mobility and writing outside the traditional literate establishment; and the relationship between writing and possible minority communities within Ugaritian society.</jats:p>
Sponsorship
European Research Council (677758)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.2041-9015.1379
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/336736
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