| Summary: | This study conducts a lexical analysis of the semantic inventory of life and mortality in Ugaritic literature. In doing so, it is believed that a comprehensive lexical analysis of these terms offers much-needed groundwork and further elucidation concerning living and dying in the Ugaritic worldview. The majority of scholarly work in this area has focused more broadly on the literary treatment of topics such as death, death/mortuary/funerary cult, afterlife, etc., approaches that are certainly valid, but which may be complemented and even enhanced by a more focused lexical analysis of the Ugaritic terms involved. Furthermore, these studies have tended to focus on death and those questions dealing with existence in the netherworld, with less attention given to the nature of life at Ugarit. After setting forth the lexical framework of life and mortality, the current work offers a thematic treatment of living and dying in the Ugaritic texts by means of literary analysis. As a last a final level of analysis, the Ugaritic understanding of life and death is compared with its ancient Near Eastern neighbors.
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