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Ola Wikander

@olawikander.bsky.social

1.8K followers 1.1K following 1.5K posts

Lundensian. Ugaritologist, Hebraist, Semitist, part IE-ist, author. PhD & Reader/Senior Lecturer, Lund. Ex Pro Futura fellow (Uppsala & Cambridge). Ordained in a rare religion. Abyssum per Sapientiam Linguā Incarnandō. Ola-Wikander-eng.se

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · Nov 18

Thread of all my currently published books! (1/x):

First:

"Unburning Fame: Horses, Dragons, Beings of Smoke, and Other Indo-European Motifs in Ugarit and the Hebrew Bible" (2017)

and

"Drought, Death, and the Sun in Ugarit and Ancient Israel: A Philological and Comparative Study" (2014)

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 10h

The Rite Ancien de Bouillon is very, very cool.

Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 13h

Ok, so I'm quoted (well, referred to) in the New Yorker (!) - Unburning Fame and dragon myths, specifically:

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Och för er som läser svenska: om någon månad eller så kommer en hel bok av undertecknad om drakmyter på Nirstedt Litteratur - "Den undflyende ormen"!

The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Story

From thunder gods to serpent slayers, scholars are reconstructing myths that vanished millennia ago. How much further can we go—and what might we find?

www.newyorker.com

Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 19h

Gah, BGL!

Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 19h

That kind of argument is the reason for this form's vocalization being more or less completely secure: the /i/ in the prefix is given by the spelling, which implies /a/ in the stem by GBL, the -u- is the sign of the long imperfect, and the -ha is the 3fs object suffix.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 19h

... which it should be; the word does probably occur in the D as well, but the /i/ as prefix vowel suggests G with /a/ as theme vowel, as per the Barth-Ginsberg Law.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 19h

Yes, if vocalized like that :-)

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 20h

Well, depends on which verbs and which forms! But relatively secure, yes.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 1d

Ugaritic word of the day:
/ ʾibġayuhā / ("I will reveal it").

Massive, oblong window in Lund Cathedral.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 2d

(especially if it was *very* approximanty and weakly articulated)

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 2d

And, not least:
it's quite easy to see how such a sound could turn into [j] or zero.

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Reposted by Ola Wikander

Anís del moro @anisdelmoro.bsky.social · 6d

B. Herin and E. Al-Wer, A Grammar of Jordanian Arabic, 2025 (Open Access).
www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 2d

[...] That would work with its etymological connection with "liquids" in other AA langs, its being used to render rhotics in transcriptions, and its being used to adumbrate (so to speak) /l/-sounds.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 2d

Ok, so my guess for the (an?) early pronunciation of Egyptian /ꜣ/ is that it was some kind of retroflex or perhaps even bunched approximant (in the vicinity of [ɻ] or [ɹ̈]). [...]

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 4d

Today's reminder that the opposite of "atheist" is not "believer in the Bible" (whatever that means).

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 5d

And tvl must be short for tular ("border, limit")! Very cool.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 5d

The name of the guy is spacey: Vnata Zutas. Zutas does look like an Etruscan nomen gentile though (-as).

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 5d

Ah, Thanks for the revised transliteration! That makes more sense! Cool!

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 6d

And J. Maxwell Miller, who, iirc, thought Jebus was a *different* place than Jerusalem, but still a real place.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 6d

Idea:
Version of the manga "Go! Go! Ackman" intended for specialists in Greek lyric poetry, called "Go! Go! Alcman".

Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 6d

(cf. Niels Peter Lemche)

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Reposted by Ola Wikander

Mark Shockley @shjsat.bsky.social · 11d

Two ways to make passive verbs in Ruus Al Jibal:

1. Stem VII (yɨnCɨCɨC)
yōkɨl 'he eats' ➡️ yɨnwɨkɨl 'it gets eaten' √w-k-l

2. "Internal passive"
yōkɨl 'he eats' ➡️ yūkal 'it is eaten'

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Reposted by Ola Wikander

Benjamin Suchard @bnuyaminim.bsky.social · 8d

This council could have been an ostracon

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 7d

Eblaite word of the day:
*ʕiṣ̂u(m) ("wood", spelt i-zu or ì-zu).

Train cars loaded with logs of wood, from Småland in Sweden.

Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 7d

As mentioned earlier, some of if the letters are weird and the transliteration even weirder. I must admit I am highly sceptical...

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 7d

Some of the letters look... weird. The alleged "n", for example.