Semitic Languages (General)

The best general reference for Semitic languages, ancient and modern, is

1. Hetzron, Robert. 1997. The Semitic Languages. Routledge.

Some good introductions to Comparative Semitics (mostly ancient) are:

1. Bergstrasser, Gotthelf. 1983. Introduction to the Semitic Languages. Trans Peter T. Daniels.
2. Moscati, Sabatino. 1980. An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages.

Some other interesting books that deal with the topic are:

1. Izre'el, Shlomo. 2002. Israel Oriental Studies XX: Semitic Linguistics: the state of the art at the turn of the 21st century.
2. Kaltner, John & Steven L. McKenzie. 2002. Beyond Babel: a handbook for Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages.

The Journal of Semitic Studies (JSS) is an excellent academic journal that deals with the Semitic languages in detail.

Another excellent resource is Insriptifact, by the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California. It features free high resolution photographs of hundreds of inscriptions and artifacts from the Ancient Near East. The Image below is a portion of an image of a Ugaritic tablet I downloaded from Inscriptifact.

It gives you only a small taste of the clarity and beauty of these images. To use it, you must sign a waiver and fax it to Inscriptifact, but it is well worth it. Thanks to Dr. Bruce Zuckerman for introducing me to this resource.