Misplaced Pages

#584415

155-757: Nabataean Aramaic is the extinct Aramaic variety used in inscriptions by the Nabataeans of the East Bank of the Jordan River , the Negev , and the Sinai Peninsula . Compared with other varieties of Aramaic, it is notable for the occurrence of a number of loanwords and grammatical borrowings from Arabic or other North Arabian languages . Attested from the 2nd century BC onwards in several dozen longer dedicatory and funerary inscriptions and

310-954: A Latin script . Periodization of historical development of Aramaic language has been the subject of particular interest for scholars, who proposed several types of periodization, based on linguistic, chronological and territorial criteria. Overlapping terminology, used in different periodizations, led to the creation of several polysemic terms, that are used differently among scholars. Terms like: Old Aramaic, Ancient Aramaic, Early Aramaic, Middle Aramaic, Late Aramaic (and some others, like Paleo-Aramaic), were used in various meanings, thus referring (in scope or substance) to different stages in historical development of Aramaic language. Most commonly used types of periodization are those of Klaus Beyer and Joseph Fitzmyer. Periodization of Klaus Beyer (1929–2014): Periodization of Joseph Fitzmyer (1920–2016): Recent periodization of Aaron Butts: Aramaic's long history and diverse and widespread use has led to

465-740: A military railroad from the Hejaz line to Beersheba, inaugurating the station on October 30, 1915. The celebration was attended by the Ottoman army commander Jamal Pasha and other senior government officials. The train line was captured by Allied forces in 1917, towards the end of the war. Today, it forms part of the Israeli railway network . Beersheba played an important role in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in World War I. The Battle of Beersheba

620-519: A sibilant first radical prefix the -t- or infix it without voicing or emphatic assimilation: y t zbn and yz t bn 'it will be sold'; these kinds of forms also occur in contemporary texts from the Dead Sea region, however. The late form mq t ry (for earlier m t qrʔ ) 'called (m.sg.)' shows Arabic-like infixation of -t- after a non-sibilant first radical, although the form cannot have been borrowed from Arabic in its entirety. A purely passive form

775-422: A "clean, compact, and somewhat sterile-looking collection of high-rise office and residential towers." The city's tallest building is Rambam Square 2, a 32-story apartment building. Many additional high-rise buildings are planned or are under construction, including skyscrapers. There are further plans to build luxury residential towers in the city. In December 2012, a plan to build 16,000 new housing units in

930-478: A 115,000-square-metre (1,240,000-square-foot) ecologically planned mall with pools for collecting rainwater and lighting generated by solar panels on the roof. It will be situated next to an 8,000-meter park with bicycle paths. In addition, the first ever farmer's market in Israel was established as an enclosed, circular complex with 400 spaces for vendors surrounded by parks and greenery. A new central bus station

1085-566: A base for the creation and adaptation of specific writing systems in some other Semitic languages of West Asia , such as the Hebrew alphabet and the Arabic alphabet . The Aramaic languages are now considered endangered , with several varieties used mainly by the older generations. Researchers are working to record and analyze all of the remaining varieties of Neo-Aramaic languages before or in case they become extinct. Aramaic dialects today form

1240-651: A bronze oil burner which attests a well-preserved dedication by a priest and his son to Obodas . This dates to the reign of the Nabataean king Rabbel II Soter , who ruled between the years 70 and 106 AD. From the period of its earliest attestation, Nabataean Aramaic is notable for the use of Arabic or Ancient North Arabian loanwords and grammar, reflecting strong contact with these languages. A first- or second-century AD Nabataean inscription from Ein Avdat even contains three lines of Arabic poetry, of debated meaning. From

1395-636: A complex set of semantic phenomena was created, becoming a subject of interest both among ancient writers and modern scholars. The Koine Greek word Ἑβραϊστί ( Hebraïstí ) has been translated as "Aramaic" in some versions of the Christian New Testament , as Aramaic was at that time the language commonly spoken by the Jews . However, Ἑβραϊστί is consistently used in Koine Greek at this time to mean Hebrew and Συριστί ( Syristi )

1550-746: A cursive Nabataean script was unearthed in Horvat Raqiq, close to the city of Beersheba , Israel. This inscription is unique not only because of its age, but also because it was written using ink applied on a large rock. Similarly cursive texts written with ink on papyrus were found as part of the Babatha archive. Some excavations have unearthed inscriptions on metallic objects. Most of such inscriptions were inscribed on metallic coins. Excavations in Wadi Musa in southern Jordan unearthed dozens of bronze fragments with Nabataean inscriptions on them, including

1705-471: A dumping site and filled with untreated wastewater. After the renovation, the river was transformed and now flows with high-quality purified wastewater. At the official entrance to the river park is the Beit Eshel Park, which consists of a park built around a courtyard with historic remains from the settlement of Beit Eshel . Four new shopping malls were also built. Among them is Kanyon Beersheba,

SECTION 10

#1732773239585

1860-414: A feminine suffix ( -h , -w , -y ) or unmarked. The masculine is always unmarked. Various endings express the combination of number and state. The feminine suffix -h is replaced by -t in the construct state, which expresses possession by a following noun or suffixed pronoun. -t is also added in the construct state after the feminine suffixes -w and -y . In other words, the construct is identical to

2015-669: A few legal documents from the period of the Nabataean Kingdom , Nabataean Aramaic remained in use for several centuries after the kingdom's annexation by the Roman Empire in 106 AD. Over time, the distinctive Nabataean script was increasingly used to write texts in the Arabic language. As a result, its latest stage gave rise to the earliest form of the Arabic script , known as Nabataean Arabic . The phonology of Nabataean Aramaic can only be reconstructed in part, based on

2170-800: A language of public life and administration of ancient kingdoms and empires, and also as a language of divine worship and religious study. Western Aramaic is still spoken by the Christian and Muslim Arameans (Syriacs) in the towns of Maaloula and nearby Jubb'adin in Syria . Other modern varieties include Neo-Aramaic languages spoken by the Assyrians , Mandeans , Mizrahi Jews . Classical varieties are used as liturgical and literary languages in several West Asian churches, as well as in Judaism , Samaritanism , and Mandaeism . Aramaic belongs to

2325-511: A monastery. Barsanuphius of Gaza corresponded with a certain monk of Beersheba, John, who might be identified with John the Prophet , who between 525 and 527 moved to the monastery of Seridus and together with Barsanuphius wrote over 850 letters on spiritual direction. During the early Muslim period , some of the Byzantine buildings continued to be used, but there was a slow decline of

2480-693: A prestige language. Following the conquest of the Sassanids by the Arabs in the 7th-century, the Aramaic-derived writing system was replaced by the Arabic alphabet in all but Zoroastrian usage , which continued to use the name 'pahlavi' for the Aramaic-derived writing system and went on to create the bulk of all Middle Iranian literature in that writing system. Other regional dialects continued to exist alongside these, often as simple, spoken variants of Aramaic. Early evidence for these vernacular dialects

2635-522: A relatively close resemblance to that of the Achaemenid period, continued to be used up to the 2nd century BCE. By the end of the 2nd century BC, several variants of Post-Achaemenid Aramaic emerged, bearing regional characteristics. One of them was Hasmonaean Aramaic, the official administrative language of Hasmonaean Judaea (142–37 BC), alongside Hebrew , which was the language preferred in religious and some other public uses (coinage). It influenced

2790-481: A shift in pronunciation to a rounded ō . The attested third person independent personal pronouns are masculine singular hw (rarely hwʔ ), feminine singular hy , and masculine plural hm . These also function as demonstrative pronouns. The legal documents found in the Dead Sea region also attest the first person singular ʔnh and second person masculine singular ʔnt . The first person plural suffixed pronoun

2945-599: A stem like rḥm 'loving (m.sg.)'. As noted above, the G-stem passive participle is formed like dk y r 'remembered (m.sg.)'. In late graffiti, the form m dk (w) r 'remembered (m.sg.)' also occurs, a pattern which is borrowed from Arabic. The participles (both active and passive) of the derived stems are formed by prefixing an m- , but examples are scarce. Nouns distinguish two genders , masculine and feminine; two numbers , singular and plural; and three states , absolute, construct, and emphatic. Feminine nouns may be marked by

3100-511: A two-storey stone khan , and several tents. By the start of 1901 there was a barracks with a small garrison as well as other buildings. The Austro-Hungarian -Czech orientalist Alois Musil noted in August 1902: By 1907, there was a large village, military post, a residence for the kaymakam and a large mosque. The population increased from 300 to 800 between 1902 and 1911, and by 1914 there were 1,000 people living in 200 houses. A plan for

3255-453: A verb is rarely expressed by a suffixed pronoun attached to the verb, normally it is attached to the following object marker yt . If a sentence includes a verb, the normal word order is verb—subject—object(s), as in lʕnw (V) dwšrʔ wmnwtw wqyšh (S) kl mn dy ... (O) 'may Dushara and Manat and Qayshah curse anyone who ...'. If a sentence does not include a verb, the sentence is copular . It then consists of two noun phrases which make up

SECTION 20

#1732773239585

3410-624: A witness that I have dug this well ( bǝ'er )." Therefore the name of that place was Be'er Sheba, for there the two of them had sworn ( nishbǝ'u ). Genesis 26 relates: And Isaac redug the wells which had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, and which the Philistines had sealed after the death of Abraham, and he used the same names as had his father . . . And they arose in the morning, and they swore ( wa-yishabǝ'u ) each to his fellow, and Isaac sent them off, and they departed him in peace. On that same day, Isaac's men came to him to tell him of

3565-534: Is -nʔ . Unlike many other dialects of Aramaic which simply have -(a)n , Nabataean preserves the final vowel * -ā here, as indicated by the mater lectionis ʔ . The third person masculine singular suffixed pronoun is normally -h . After long vowels and diphthongs (both marked by matres lectionis ), -hy is used instead, as in ʔbw hy 'his father', ywmw hy 'his days'. In later graffiti, this distribution breaks down and other suffixes, -hw and -w , also appear. The third person feminine singular suffixed pronoun

3720-958: Is Classical Syriac , the liturgical language of Syriac Christianity . It is used by several communities, including the Assyrian Church of the East , the Ancient Church of the East , the Chaldean Catholic Church , the Syriac Orthodox Church , the Syriac Catholic Church , the Maronite Church , and also the Saint Thomas Christians , Syriac Christians of Kerala , India . One of the liturgical dialects

3875-568: Is zy in the oldest inscriptions and dy elsewhere; it does not inflect. The relative particle introduces relative clauses, as in dʔ msgdʔ dy ʕbd ʕbydw 'this is the sacred stone which ʕBYDW made', and can express a genitive relation, as in dnʔ ṣlmʔ dy ʕbdt ʔlhʔ 'this is the statue of Obodas the god'. Finally, the attested interrogative and indefinite pronouns are mn 'who' and mh 'what'. Like other Semitic languages, Nabataean Aramaic attests various (basic and derived) verb stems . Based on comparison with other varieties of Aramaic, it

4030-470: Is always -h and the third person plural (used both for masculine and feminine) is -hm . The most common demonstrative pronouns besides hw , hy , and hm are masculine singular dnh (rarely znh ), feminine singular dʔ , and plural ʔlh . Other, rarely attested, plural forms are ʔlk and ʔnw . In the later period, the gender distinction in the singular breaks down and both forms occur with both masculine and feminine antecedents. The relative particle

4185-567: Is an emphasis on writing as words are pronounced rather than using etymological forms. The use of written Aramaic in the Achaemenid bureaucracy also precipitated the adoption of Aramaic(-derived) scripts to render a number of Middle Iranian languages. Moreover, many common words, including even pronouns, particles, numerals, and auxiliaries, continued to be written as Aramaic "words" even when writing Middle Iranian languages. In time, in Iranian usage, these Aramaic "words" became disassociated from

4340-476: Is characterized by a cursive style. This is even more true for the few known texts that were written with ink, which use a more advanced form of the script. The Nabataean alphabet itself developed out of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet . It became the precursor of the Arabic alphabet , which developed out of cursive variants of the Nabataean script in the 5th century. Scholars used to be divided over

4495-417: Is designated by two distinctive groups of terms, first of them represented by endonymic (native) names, and the other one represented by various exonymic (foreign in origin) names. Native (endonymic) terms for Aramaic language were derived from the same word root as the name of its original speakers, the ancient Arameans . Endonymic forms were also adopted in some other languages, like ancient Hebrew . In

4650-427: Is inconclusive. As the Nabataean script does not indicate short vowels, the only information on vocalic phonemes comes from names in foreign transcription. But these are normally of Arabic origin and do not tell us anything about Nabataean Aramaic. Proto-Aramaic long * ā is sometimes spelled with a mater lectionis w , as in * ʔin ā š > ʔn w š 'human', * θam ā nā > tm w nʔ 'eight (m.)'. This may indicate

4805-403: Is inflected as a plural before suffixes, as in ʕl why over him , ʕl yhm 'over them'. Of the two finite verb conjugations, the suffix conjugation can express the past tense , as in dnh kprʔ dy ʕbd ... 'this is the grave which ... made' , and the optative , as in w lʕnw dwšrʔ wmnwtw wqyšh ... 'and may Dushara and Manat and Qayshah curse ...'. The prefix conjugation expresses

Nabataean Aramaic - Misplaced Pages Continue

4960-427: Is known only through their influence on words and names in a more standard dialect. However, some of those regional dialects became written languages by the 2nd century BC. These dialects reflect a stream of Aramaic that is not directly dependent on Achaemenid Aramaic , and they also show a clear linguistic diversity between eastern and western regions. Babylonian Targumic is the later post-Achaemenid dialect found in

5115-492: Is likely that active verbs could occur as G-stems (basic stem), D-stems (intensive stem, characterized by different vowels and gemination of the second radical ), or C-stems (causative stem, characterized by different vowels and a prefix). Due to the limitations of the Nabataean alphabet, the G- and D-stem are not distinguished in writing: cf. ʕbd 'he made' (G-stem), qrb 'he approached' (D-stem). The suffix conjugation (see below) of

5270-449: Is marked by a mater lectionis -y- between the second and third radical, as in dk y r 'remembered (be) (m.sg.)'. This is sometimes inflected as an adjective, as in dkyr yn 'remembered (m.pl.)' but can also be inflected according to the suffix conjugation, as in ʕbyd t 'it (f.) was made'. Two finite conjugations can be distinguished: the suffix conjugation , which exclusively marks its subject agreement through suffixation, and

5425-456: Is often spoken of as a single language but is actually a group of related languages. Some languages differ more from each other than the Romance languages do among themselves. Its long history, extensive literature, and use by different religious communities are all factors in the diversification of the language. Some Aramaic dialects are mutually intelligible, whereas others are not, similar to

5580-453: Is still the main spoken language, and many large cities in this region also have Suret-speaking communities, particularly Mosul , Erbil , Kirkuk , Dohuk , and al-Hasakah . In modern Israel, the only native Aramaic-speaking population are the Jews of Kurdistan , although the language is dying out. However, Aramaic is also experiencing a revival among Maronites in Israel in Jish . Aramaic

5735-481: Is the mixing of literary Hasmonaean with the dialect of Galilee . The Hasmonaean targums reached Galilee in the 2nd century AD, and were reworked into this Galilean dialect for local use. The Galilean Targum was not considered an authoritative work by other communities, and documentary evidence shows that its text was amended. From the 11th century AD onwards, once the Babylonian Targum had become normative,

5890-512: Is thus connected to two of the three Wife–sister narratives in the Book of Genesis . According to the Hebrew Bible, Beersheba was founded when Abraham and Abimelech settled their differences over a well of water and made a covenant (see Genesis 21:22–34 ). Abimelech's men had taken the well from Abraham after he had previously dug it so Abraham brought sheep and cattle to Abimelech to get

6045-521: Is used to mean Aramaic. In Biblical scholarship, the term "Chaldean" was for many years used as a synonym of Aramaic, due to its use in the book of Daniel and subsequent interpretation by Jerome . During the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires, Arameans , the native speakers of Aramaic, began to settle in greater numbers in Babylonia , and later in the heartland of Assyria , also known as

6200-495: The Achaemenid (Persian) conquest of Mesopotamia under Darius I , Aramaic (as had been used in that region) was adopted by the conquerors as the "vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast empire with its different peoples and languages. The use of a single official language, which modern scholarship has dubbed Official Aramaic or Imperial Aramaic , can be assumed to have greatly contributed to

6355-555: The Achaemenid Empire but with local developments. Of the few innovations compared to Imperial Aramaic, the use of the object marker yt is a Western Aramaic feature, although the older form ʔyt already occurs in Old Aramaic . Since Nabataean Aramaic also does not participate in innovations typical of Eastern Aramaic , it is commonly assigned to Western Aramaic. Evidence of Nabataean writings can be found in

Nabataean Aramaic - Misplaced Pages Continue

6510-690: The Babylonian Talmud ( Sanhedrin 38b), the language spoken by Adam – the Bible's first human – was Aramaic. Aramaic was the language of Jesus , who spoke the Galilean dialect during his public ministry, as well as the language of several sections of the Hebrew Bible , including parts of the books of Daniel and Ezra , and also the language of the Targum ,

6665-547: The Bible : Biblical Aramaic is a somewhat hybrid dialect. It is theorized that some Biblical Aramaic material originated in both Babylonia and Judaea before the fall of the Achaemenid dynasty. Biblical Aramaic presented various challenges for writers who were engaged in early Biblical studies . Since the time of Jerome of Stridon (d. 420), Aramaic of the Bible was named as "Chaldean" (Chaldaic, Chaldee). That label remained common in early Aramaic studies , and persisted up into

6820-640: The Euphrates , Tiglath-Pileser III made Aramaic the Empire's second official language, and it eventually supplanted Akkadian completely. From 700 BC, the language began to spread in all directions, but lost much of its unity. Different dialects emerged in Assyria, Babylonia, the Levant and Egypt . Around 600 BC, Adon, a Canaanite king, used Aramaic to write to an Egyptian Pharaoh . Around 500 BC, following

6975-486: The Hebrew Bible in connection with the Patriarchs Abraham and Isaac , who both dug a well and close peace treaties with King Abimelech of Gerar at the site. Hence it receives its name twice, first after Abraham's dealings with Abimelech ( Genesis 21:22–34 ), and again from Isaac who closes his own covenant with Abimelech of Gerar and whose servants also dig a well there ( Genesis 26:23–33 ). The place

7130-650: The Jewish National Fund funded major redevelopment projects in Beersheba. One such project is the Beersheba River Walk, a 900-acre (3.6-square-kilometre) riverfront park stretching along 8 kilometers of the riverside and containing a 15-acre (6.1-hectare) manmade boating lake, a 12,000-seat amphitheater, green spaces, playgrounds, and a bridge along the route of the city's Mekorot water pipes. The Beersheba River had previously been used as

7285-528: The Levant and parts of Asia Minor , Arabian Peninsula , and Ancient Iran under Assyrian rule. At its height, Aramaic was spoken in what is now Iraq , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Jordan , Kuwait , parts of southeast and south central Turkey , northern parts of the Arabian Peninsula and parts of northwest Iran , as well as the southern Caucasus , having gradually replaced several other related Semitic languages. According to

7440-593: The Masoretic Text in Joshua 19:2, usually translated "Beersheba or Sheba"; however the Septuagint reads "Beersheba and Samaa (Σαμαὰ)" which fits with MT 1 Chron. 4:28. Abraham ibn Ezra and Samuel b. Meir suggest the two etymologies refer to two different cities. During the Ottoman administration, the city was referred as بلدية بئرالسبع ( Belediye Birüsseb ). Beersheba is mainly dealt with in

7595-628: The Mishmar HaNegev junction, 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of Beersheba and others from the Turkish train station and Hatzerim . By 9:45, Beersheba was in Israeli hands. Around 120 Egyptian soldiers were taken prisoner. All of the Arab inhabitants who had resisted were expelled. The remaining Arab civilians, 200 men and 150 women and children, were taken to the police fort and, on October 25,

7750-693: The Near East , with the main Neo-Aramaic languages being Suret (~240,000 speakers) and Turoyo (~250,000 speakers). Western Neo-Aramaic (~3,000) persists in only two villages in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains in western Syria . They have retained use of the once-dominant lingua franca despite subsequent language shifts experienced throughout the Middle East. The connection between Chaldean, Syriac, and Samaritan as "Aramaic"

7905-682: The Phoenician alphabet , and there is a unity in the written language. It seems that, in time, a more refined alphabet, suited to the needs of the language, began to develop from this in the eastern regions of Aram. Due to increasing Aramean migration eastward, the Western periphery of Assyria became bilingual in Akkadian and Aramean at least as early as the mid-9th century BC. As the Neo-Assyrian Empire conquered Aramean lands west of

SECTION 50

#1732773239585

8060-470: The Sasanian Empire (224 AD), dominating the influential, eastern dialect region. As such, the term covers over thirteen centuries of the development of Aramaic. This vast time span includes all Aramaic that is now effectively extinct. Regarding the earliest forms, Beyer suggests that written Aramaic probably dates from the 11th century BCE, as it is established by the 10th century, to which he dates

8215-492: The Targum Onqelos and Targum Jonathan , the "official" targums. The original, Hasmonaean targums had reached Babylon sometime in the 2nd or 3rd century AD. They were then reworked according to the contemporary dialect of Babylon to create the language of the standard targums. This combination formed the basis of Babylonian Jewish literature for centuries to follow. Galilean Targumic is similar to Babylonian Targumic. It

8370-787: The Torah (Hebrew Bible), "Aram" is used as a proper name of several people including descendants of Shem, Nahor, and Jacob. Ancient Aram , bordering northern Israel and what is now called Syria, is considered the linguistic center of Aramaic, the language of the Arameans who settled the area during the Bronze Age c.  3500 BC . The language is often mistakenly considered to have originated within Assyria (Iraq). In fact, Arameans carried their language and writing into Mesopotamia by voluntary migration, by forced exile of conquering armies, and by nomadic Chaldean invasions of Babylonia during

8525-461: The future tense , as in wmn ybʕʔ ... 'and whoever shall want ...' and can be used modally as a subjunctive , as in ... dy tʕbd bh ... '... so that she make of it ...', conditional , as in hn yhwʔ ... bḥgrʔ 'if ... be in Hegra ', or optative, like the suffix conjugation, as in w ylʕn dwšrʔ wmnwtw ... 'and may Dushara and Manat curse ...'. While the pronominal direct object of

8680-606: The lingua franca of public life, trade and commerce throughout Achaemenid territories. Wide use of written Aramaic subsequently led to the adoption of the Aramaic alphabet and, as logograms , some Aramaic vocabulary in the Pahlavi scripts , which were used by several Middle Iranian languages , including Parthian , Middle Persian , Sogdian , and Khwarezmian . Some variants of Aramaic are also retained as sacred languages by certain religious communities. Most notable among them

8835-407: The lingua franca of the Near East . Koine Greek now appeared beside it. The formerly unified written culture fell apart into local schools and the old vernaculars now also increased in importance as written languages. Nabataean Aramaic was one of these local varieties. The language of the Nabataean inscriptions, attested from the second century BCE, is close to the Imperial Aramaic of

8990-417: The prefix conjugation , which uses both suffixes and prefixes. Attested suffix conjugation endings include -t (third person feminine singular and second person masculine singular) and -w (third person plural for both genders); the third person masculine singular is unmarked. Examples include ʕbd 'he made', ʕbd t 'she made', ʕbd w 'they made', and qrʔ t 'you (m.sg.) called'. The subject markers for

9145-600: The "Arbela triangle" ( Assur , Nineveh , and Arbela ). The influx eventually resulted in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC) adopting an Akkadian -influenced Imperial Aramaic as the lingua franca of its empire. This policy was continued by the short-lived Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Medes , and all three empires became operationally bilingual in written sources, with Aramaic used alongside Akkadian. The Achaemenid Empire (539–323 BC) continued this tradition, and

9300-410: The "Roundabouts Capital of Israel" and the largest number of roundabouts in the world. The Book of Genesis gives two etymologies for the name Be'er Sheba . Genesis 21:28-31 relates: Then Abraham set seven ewes apart. And Abimelech said to Abraham, "What mean these seven ewes, which you have set apart? And [Abraham] said, "That you are to take these seven ( sheba ) ewes from me, to be for me

9455-439: The "conquest of Beersheba, occupation of outposts around it, [and] demolition of most of the town." The objective was to break the Egyptian blockade of Israeli convoys to the Negev. The Egyptian army did not expect an offensive and fled en masse. Israel bombed the town on October 16. At 4:00 am on October 21, the 8th Brigade's 89th battalion and the Negev Brigade 's 7th and 9th battalions moved in. Some troops advanced from

SECTION 60

#1732773239585

9610-460: The "last successful cavalry charge in British military history." On the edge of Beersheba's Old City is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery containing the graves of Australian, New Zealand and British soldiers. The town also contains a memorial park dedicated to them . During the Palestine Mandate , Beersheba was a major administrative center. The British constructed a railway between Rafah and Beersheba in October 1917 which opened to

9765-400: The "water city" of Israel. One of the projects, "Beersheva beach", is a 7- dunam fountain opposite city hall. Other projects included fountains near the Soroka Medical Center and in front of the Shamoon College of Engineering. In the 1990s, as skyscrapers began to appear in Israel, the construction of high-rise buildings began in Beersheba. Today, downtown Beersheba has been described as

9920-408: The 3rd century BCE, Greek overtook Aramaic in many spheres of public communication, particularly in highly Hellenized cities throughout the Seleucid domains. However, Aramaic continued to be used, in its post-Achaemenid form, among upper and literate classes of native Aramaic-speaking communities, and also by local authorities (along with the newly introduced Greek). Post-Achaemenid Aramaic, that bears

10075-470: The Achaemenid-era use of Aramaic was more pervasive than generally thought. Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised; its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect, and the inevitable influence of Persian gave the language a new clarity and robust flexibility. For centuries after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire (in 330 BC), Imperial Aramaic – or a version thereof near enough for it to be recognisable – would remain an influence on

10230-682: The Arab state. It was occupied by the Egyptian army from May 1948 until October 1948 when it was captured by the Israel Defense Forces and part of Arab population fled, relocated or was expelled. Today, the metropolitan area is composed of approximately equal Jewish and Arab populations, with a large portion of the Jewish population made up of the descendants of Sephardi Jews and Mizrahi Jews who fled, relocated or were expelled from Arab countries after Israel's founding in 1948, as well as smaller communities of Bene Israel and Cochin Jews from India. Second and third waves of immigration have taken place since 1990, bringing Russian-speaking immigrants from

10385-403: The Arabs in the 7th century and to the Turks in the 16th century. It long remained a watering place and small trade centre for the nomadic Bedouin tribes of the Negev , despite Turkish efforts at town planning and development around 1900. Its capture in 1917 by the British Army opened the way for their conquest of Palestine and Syria. After being taken by Israeli troops in October 1948, Beersheba

10540-399: The Aramaic elements it had and to have successively replaced them with Arabic loans". This theory, while widely acknowledged, is contested. Michael Patrick O'Connor has questioned alleged Arabic loanwords identified by Cantineau, stating that loanwords are largely restricted to technical terms. More recently, Aaron Butts has argued that the use of Aramaic in the tomb inscriptions of Hegra in

10695-418: The Aramaic language and came to be understood as signs (i.e. logograms ), much like the symbol '&' is read as "and" in English and the original Latin et is now no longer obvious. Under the early 3rd-century BC Parthian Arsacids , whose government used Greek but whose native language was Parthian , the Parthian language and its Aramaic-derived writing system both gained prestige. This in turn also led to

10850-511: The Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible. It is also the language of the Jerusalem Talmud , Babylonian Talmud , and Zohar . The scribes of the Neo-Assyrian bureaucracy also used Aramaic, and this practice was subsequently inherited by the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire (605–539 BC) and later by the Achaemenid Empire (539–330 BC). Mediated by scribes that had been trained in the language, highly standardized written Aramaic, named by scholars Imperial Aramaic , progressively also became

11005-407: The Arameans had a string of kingdoms in what is now part of Syria , Lebanon , Jordan , Turkey , and the fringes of southern Mesopotamia ( Iraq ). Aramaic rose to prominence under the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC), under whose influence Aramaic became a prestige language after being adopted as a lingua franca of the empire by Assyrian kings, and its use was spread throughout Mesopotamia ,

11160-656: The Assyrians of northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and northwest Iran, with diaspora communities in Armenia , Georgia , Azerbaijan , and southern Russia . The Mandaeans also continue to use Classical Mandaic as a liturgical language, although most now speak Arabic as their first language. There are still also a small number of first-language speakers of Western Aramaic varieties in isolated villages in western Syria. Being in contact with other regional languages, some Neo-Aramaic dialects were often engaged in

11315-647: The Biblical Aramaic of the Qumran texts, and was the main language of non-biblical theological texts of that community. The major Targums , translations of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic, were originally composed in Hasmonaean Aramaic. It also appears in quotations in the Mishnah and Tosefta , although smoothed into its later context. It is written quite differently from Achaemenid Aramaic; there

11470-570: The C-stem is marked by a prefixed h- , as in h qym 'he erected', or ʔ- , as in ʔ qymw 'they erected'; the prefix conjugation cannot be distinguished in writing from the G- or D-stem. Mediopassive stems are derived from the G- and D-stems. These are marked by a prefixed -t- ; all the examples Cantineau mentions are prefix conjugation forms (see below), such as y t ptḥ 'it will be opened' (tG-stem), y t ʔlp 'he will compose for himself' (tD-stem). Unlike in some other kinds of Aramaic, verbs with

11625-543: The Galilean version became heavily influenced by it. Babylonian Documentary Aramaic is a dialect in use from the 3rd century AD onwards. It is the dialect of Babylonian private documents, and, from the 12th century, all Jewish private documents are in Aramaic. It is based on Hasmonaean with very few changes. This was perhaps because many of the documents in BDA are legal documents, the language in them had to be sensible throughout

11780-559: The Hebrew Bible, a Greek translation, used the terms Syria and Syrian where the Masoretic Text , the earliest extant Hebrew copy of the Bible, uses the terms Aramean and Aramaic ; numerous later bibles followed the Septuagint's usage, including the King James Version . This connection between the names Syrian and Aramaic was discussed in 1835 by Étienne Marc Quatremère . In historical sources, Aramaic language

11935-542: The Jewish community from the start, and Hasmonaean was the old standard. Beersheba Beersheba ( / b ɪər ˈ ʃ iː b ə / beer- SHEE -bə ), officially Be'er-Sheva (usually spelled Beer Sheva ; Hebrew : באר שבע ‎ , romanized :  Bəʾēr Ševaʿ , IPA: [ˈbe(ʔ)eʁ ˈʃeva(ʕ)] ; Arabic : بئر السبع ‎ , romanized :  Biʾr as-Sabʿ , IPA: [biʔr‿as.sabʕ] ; lit.   ' Well of

12090-545: The Nabataeans", interpreted by Joseph Naveh  [ de ] as Aretas I , an Arab ruler with whom the Jewish high priest Jason reputedly sought refuge in Petra in 169 BC. This inscription lacks some of the Nabataean features and resembles uniform Imperial Aramaic and Jewish script. Therefore, some scholars propose that the earliest Nabataean inscription is one found in Petra, Jordan , which can be dated back to

12245-540: The Negev during this period, and Negev Bedouin. Anthropologist and educationalist Aref Abu-Rabia , who worked for the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture , described it as "the first Bedouin city". In June 1899, the Ottoman government ordered the creation of the Beersheba sub-district ( kaza ) of the district ( mutasarrıflık ) of Jerusalem , with Beersheba to be developed as its capital. Implementation

12400-655: The Northwest group of the Semitic language family , which also includes the mutually intelligible Canaanite languages such as Hebrew , Edomite , Moabite , Ekronite, Sutean , and Phoenician , as well as Amorite and Ugaritic . Aramaic languages are written in the Aramaic alphabet , a descendant of the Phoenician alphabet , and the most prominent alphabet variant is the Syriac alphabet . The Aramaic alphabet also became

12555-586: The Oath' or 'Well of the Seven ' ), is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel . Often referred to as the "Capital of the Negev", it is the centre of the fourth-most populous metropolitan area in Israel, the eighth-most populous Israeli city with a population of 214,162, and the second-largest city in area (after Jerusalem ), with a total area of 117,500 dunams (45 mi / 117.5 km ). Human habitation near present-day Beersheba dates back to

12710-580: The Phoenicians and nothing to the Arameans, as if they could not have written at all". Kopp noted that some of the words on the Carpentras Stele corresponded to the Aramaic in the Book of Daniel , and in the Book of Ruth . Josephus and Strabo (the latter citing Posidonius ) both stated that the "Syrians" called themselves "Arameans". The Septuagint , the earliest extant full copy of

12865-695: The Rural Property Tax Ordinance not being applied there. The 1945 village survey conducted by the Palestine Mandate government found 5,570 (5,360 Muslims, 200 Christians and 10 others). In 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) proposed that Beersheba be included within the Jewish state in their partition plan for Palestine. However, when the UN's Ad Hoc Committee revised

13020-410: The absolute state in the singular. One set of plural endings consists of absolute -yn (rarely -n ), construct -y (which changes to -w- before the suffix -hy ), used for masculine and some feminine nouns. For other feminine nouns, the construct plural form is written the same as the construct singular form (although the plural was probably marked by a long ā vowel, as in -āt- , that was absent in

13175-654: The adoption of the name ' pahlavi ' (< parthawi , "of the Parthians") for that writing system. The Persian Sassanids , who succeeded the Parthian Arsacids in the mid-3rd century AD, subsequently inherited/adopted the Parthian-mediated Aramaic-derived writing system for their own Middle Iranian ethnolect as well. That particular Middle Iranian dialect, Middle Persian , i.e. the language of Persia proper, subsequently also became

13330-467: The area. Following the conclusion of the war, the 1949 Armistice Agreements formally granted Beersheba to Israel. The town was then transformed into an Israeli city with only an exiguous Arab minority. Beersheba was deemed strategically important due to its location with a reliable water supply and at a major crossroads, northeast to Hebron and Jerusalem , east to the Dead Sea and al Karak , south to Aqaba , west to Gaza and southwest to Al-Auja and

13485-488: The astonishing success of the Achaemenids in holding their far-flung empire together for as long as they did". In 1955, Richard Frye questioned the classification of Imperial Aramaic as an "official language", noting that no surviving edict expressly and unambiguously accorded that status to any particular language. Frye reclassifies Imperial Aramaic as the lingua franca of the Achaemenid territories, suggesting then that

13640-510: The best known is the Story of Ahikar , a book of instructive aphorisms quite similar in style to the biblical Book of Proverbs . Consensus as of 2022 regards the Aramaic portion of the Biblical book of Daniel (i.e., 2:4b–7:28) as an example of Imperial (Official) Aramaic. Achaemenid Aramaic is sufficiently uniform that it is often difficult to know where any particular example of the language

13795-514: The border with Egypt . After a few months, the town's war-damaged houses were repaired. As a post-independence wave of Jewish immigration to Israel began, Beersheba experienced a population boom as thousands of immigrants moved in. The city rapidly expanded beyond its core, which became known as the "Old City", as new neighborhoods were built around it, complete with various housing projects such as apartment buildings and houses with auxiliary farms, as well as shopping centers and schools. The Old City

13950-480: The borrowing of certain Greek words, such as ʔsrtg 'general' (Greek stratēgós ). Some of these ultimately come from Latin , like qysr 'Caesar'. From earlier stages of Aramaic, Nabataean inherited a few loanwords from Akkadian : the attested borrowings are ʔpkl (a kind of priest; Akkadian apkallu , ultimately from Sumerian abgal ) and šyzb 'to save' (Akkadian šūzubu ). Aramaic Aramaic served as

14105-545: The burial and dedicatory inscriptions of the cities of Petra , Bosra and Hegra (Mada'in Salih) . Many shorter inscriptions have been found in the southern Sinai Peninsula as well as other areas that were at one point ruled by the Nabataean kings. Several Nabataean texts written on papyrus were found at Nahal Hever . The oldest Nabataean inscription was found in Elusa , in the Negev . The inscription mentions "Aretas, king of

14260-575: The camp, such as a bath house and dwellings, were found in later excavations. During the Byzantine period, at least six churches were built there, one of which is the largest church to have been excavated in the Negev. Some of the churches were still in use until the Umayyad period but it remains uncertain whether they continued beyond the early eight century. Monasticism is also attested in historical documents and one structure has been identified as

14415-525: The city in regard to idolatry ( Amos 5:5 and 8:14). Following the Babylonian conquest and subsequent enslavement of many Israelites , the town was abandoned. After the Israelite slaves returned from Babylon , they resettled the town. According to the Hebrew Bible, Beersheba was the southernmost city of the territories settled by Israelites, hence the expression " from Dan to Beersheba " to describe

14570-491: The city, which was manifested in the demolition of the public buildings and their transformation into a source of raw material for secondary construction . In the second half of the 8th century, the city was apparently abandoned. In 1483, during the late Mamluk era, the pilgrim Felix Fabri noted Beersheba as a city. Fabri also noted that Beersheba marked the southern-most border of "the Holy Land". The present-day city

14725-585: The development of many divergent varieties, which are sometimes considered dialects , though they have become distinct enough over time that they are now sometimes considered separate languages . Therefore, there is not one singular, static Aramaic language; each time and place rather has had its own variation. The more widely spoken Eastern Aramaic languages are largely restricted to Assyrian , Mandean and Mizrahi Jewish communities in Iraq , northeastern Syria , northwestern Iran , and southeastern Turkey , whilst

14880-543: The development of the language from being spoken in Aramaean city-states to become a major means of communication in diplomacy and trade throughout Mesopotamia , the Levant , and Egypt . After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, local vernaculars became increasingly prominent, fanning the divergence of an Aramaic dialect continuum and the development of differing written standards. "Ancient Aramaic" refers to

15035-431: The dividing line being roughly the Euphrates , or slightly west of it. It is also helpful to distinguish modern living languages, or Neo-Aramaics, and those that are still in use as literary or liturgical languages or are only of interest to scholars. Although there are some exceptions to this rule, this classification gives "Old", "Middle", and "Modern" periods alongside "Eastern" and "Western" areas to distinguish between

15190-580: The earliest known period of the language, from its origin until it becomes the lingua franca of the Fertile Crescent . It was the language of the Aramean city-states of Damascus , Hamath , and Arpad . There are inscriptions that evidence the earliest use of the language, dating from the 10th century BC. These inscriptions are mostly diplomatic documents between Aramaean city-states. The alphabet of Aramaic at this early period seems to be based on

15345-625: The extensive influence of these empires led to Aramaic gradually becoming the lingua franca of most of western Asia, Anatolia , the Caucasus , and Egypt . Beginning with the rise of the Rashidun Caliphate and the early Muslim conquests in the late seventh century, Arabic gradually replaced Aramaic as the lingua franca of the Near East . However, Aramaic remains a spoken, literary, and liturgical language for local Christians and also some Jews. Aramaic also continues to be spoken by

15500-508: The former Soviet Union as well as Beta Israel immigrants from Ethiopia . The Soviet immigrants have made the game of chess a major sport in Beersheba, and it is now Israel's national chess center, with more chess grandmasters per capita than any other city in the world. Beersheba is home to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev . This city also serves as a center for Israel's high-tech and developing technology industry . The city has constructed over 250 roundabouts, earning its moniker as

15655-505: The fourth millennium BC. In the Bible, Beersheba marks the southern boundary of ancient Israel , as mentioned in the phrase " From Dan to Beersheba ." Initially assigned to the Tribe of Judah , Beersheba was later reassigned to Simeon . During the monarchic era , it functioned as a royal city but eventually faced destruction at the hands of the Assyrians . The Biblical site of Beersheba is Tel Be'er Sheva , lying some 4 km distant from

15810-507: The history of Aramaic language. During the early stages of the post-Achaemenid era, public use of Aramaic language was continued, but shared with the newly introduced Greek language . By the year 300 BC, all of the main Aramaic-speaking regions came under political rule of the newly created Seleucid Empire that promoted Hellenistic culture , and favored Greek language as the main language of public life and administration. During

15965-558: The late Hellenistic era in the years 96 or 95 BC. Over 4,000 inscriptions have been confirmed to be written in Nabataean Aramaic. The vast majority are engraved on stone, like the Aslah Triclinium inscription from Petra (95 BC), the dedication to the goddess al-Kutbay from Wadi Tumilat (77 BC) and the inscription of Rabbel I from Petra (66 BC). The earliest inscription found to be written in

16120-555: The legal documents written on papyrus discovered in the Nahal Hever Cave of Letters in the 1960s. Other publications containing a significant number of texts are the 1993 edition of the tomb inscriptions of Mada'in Saleh by J. Healey and the collection of Nabatean Aramaic–Greek bilingual texts published by G. Petrantoni in 2021. Newly discovered inscriptions continue to be published with great frequency. Nabataean handwriting

16275-519: The line of Turkish defense between Gaza and Beersheba. Approximately five-hundred soldiers of the Australian 4th Light Horse Regiment and the 12th Light Horse Regiment of the 4th Light Horse Brigade , led by Brigadier General William Grant , with only horses and bayonets, charged the Turkish trenches, overran them and captured the wells in what has become known as the Battle of Beersheba , called

16430-505: The local sheikh until the government house ( Saraya ) was built. Kamal was replaced by Muhammed Carullah Efendi in 1901, who in turn was replaced by Hamdi Bey in 1903. The governor in 1908 was promoted to 'adjoint' ( mutassarrıf muavin ) to the governor of the Jerusalem district, which placed him above the other sub-district governors. A visitor to Beersheba in May 1900 found only a ruin,

16585-578: The modern city, which was established at the start of the 20th century by the Ottomans . The city was captured by the British-led Australian Light Horse troops in the Battle of Beersheba during World War I . The population of the town was completely changed in 1948–49. Bir Seb'a ( Arabic : بئر السبع ), as it was then known, had been almost entirely Muslim, and the 1947 UN Partition Plan designated it to be part of

16740-445: The mostly consonantal Nabataean script and comparison with other kinds of Aramaic. Similarly, its morphology and syntax are incompletely attested, but are mostly comparable to other varieties of Aramaic from this period. The Nabataean lexicon is also largely Aramaic in origin, with notable borrowings from Arabic , Greek , and other languages. With the collapse of the Achaemenid Empire (330s BC), Aramaic lost importance as

16895-514: The mother tongues of the Arameans (Syriacs) in the Qalamoun mountains , Assyrians and Mandaeans , as well as some Mizrahi Jews . Early Aramaic inscriptions date from 11th century BC, placing it among the earliest languages to be written down . Aramaicist Holger Gzella  [ de ] notes, "The linguistic history of Aramaic prior to the appearance of the first textual sources in

17050-586: The mutual exchange of influences, particularly with Arabic, Iranian, and Kurdish. The turbulence of the last two centuries (particularly the Assyrian genocide , also known as Seyfo "Sword" in Syriac, has seen speakers of first-language and literary Aramaic dispersed throughout the world. However, there are several sizable Assyrian towns in northern Iraq, such as Alqosh , Bakhdida , Bartella , Tesqopa , and Tel Keppe , and numerous small villages, where Aramaic

17205-506: The nineteenth century. The " Chaldean misnomer " was eventually abandoned, when modern scholarly analyses showed that Aramaic dialect used in Hebrew Bible was not related to ancient Chaldeans and their language. The fall of the Achaemenid Empire ( c. 334–330 BC), and its replacement with the newly created political order, imposed by Alexander the Great (d. 323 BC) and his Hellenistic successors, marked an important turning point in

17360-403: The ninth century BC remains unknown." Aramaic is also believed by most historians and scholars to have been the primary language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth both for preaching and in everyday life. Historically and originally, Aramaic was the language of the Arameans , a Semitic-speaking people of the region between the northern Levant and the northern Tigris valley. By around 1000 BC,

17515-544: The north of Saudi Arabia reflects imperfect learning by native speakers of a North Arabian language. Nabataean Aramaic continued to be written for several centuries during this rise of Arabic written in the Nabataean script. The longer texts from this period mainly concern a few funerary inscriptions from North Arabian oasis towns. Based on the high number of Hebrew -derived names these contain, they may have been commissioned by members of local Jewish communities . The latest Nabataean inscription found dates back to 356 AD. This

17670-673: The north of the city. In the following years, the town served as front-line defence against Nabatean attacks and was on the limes belt, which in this region is attributed to the time of Vespasian (1st century AD). The city become the centre of an eparchy around 268. During the Roman and Byzantine periods, the city developed significantly and the burial grounds on the outskirts of the city became residential areas. The inhabitants, which consisted of Nabataeans , Jews and other ethnicities, spoke primarily Greek and lived from olive oil production, viticulture, agricultural and other trades. After

17825-426: The numerous wells in the area. According to the Hebrew Bible , the wells were dug by Abraham and Isaac when they arrived there. The streets were laid out in a grid, with separate areas for administrative, commercial, military, and residential use. It is believed to have been the first planned settlement in the region, and is also noteworthy for its elaborate water system; in particular, a huge cistern carved out of

17980-474: The oath of Isaac and Abimelech in Genesis 26:33 . Alternatively, Obadiah Sforno suggested that the well is called Seven because it was the seventh dug; the narrative of Genesis 26 includes three wells dug by Abraham which are reopened by Isaac ( Esek , Sitnah, Rehoboth ), for a total of six, after which Isaac goes to Beersheba, the seventh well. The double name of Shib'a and Beersheba is referenced again by

18135-407: The oldest inscriptions of northern Syria. Heinrichs uses the less controversial date of the 9th century, for which there is clear and widespread attestation. The central phase in the development of Old Aramaic was its official use by the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–608 BC), Neo-Babylonian Empire (620–539 BC), and Achaemenid Empire (500–330 BC). The period before this, dubbed "Ancient Aramaic", saw

18290-852: The origins of Arabic script. One (now marginal) school of thought derives the Arabic script from the Syriac script , which also originated in Imperial Aramaic. The second school of thought, led by Theodor Nöldeke , traces Arabic script to Nabataean. This thesis was confirmed by John Healey in his work on the Syriac and the Arabic alphabet. According to Cantineau, Nabataean Aramaic had the following consonantal sounds: In other contemporary dialects of Aramaic, [f], [θ], [x], [v], [ð], and [ɣ] are postvocalic allophones of /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/, and /g/, respectively, but according to Cantineau, it cannot be established whether this also holds for Nabataean. The voiceless sibilants /s/ and /ʃ/ are sometimes confused in writing. /s/ also interchanges with /ɬ/, which

18445-481: The period from 1200 to 1000 BC. Unlike in Hebrew, designations for Aramaic language in some other ancient languages were mostly exonymic. In ancient Greek , Aramaic language was most commonly known as the "Syrian language", in relation to the native (non-Greek) inhabitants of the historical region of Syria . Since the name of Syria itself emerged as a variant of Assyria, the biblical Ashur , and Akkadian Ashuru,

18600-428: The plan, they moved Beersheva to the Arab state on account of it being primarily Arab. Egyptian forces had been stationed at Beersheva since May 1948. After the Arab states invaded Palestine and declared war on the newly-founded Jewish state of Israel , Yigal Allon proposed the conquest of Beersheba, which was approved by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion . According to Israeli historian Benny Morris , Allon ordered

18755-455: The population had grown to 80,000. The University of the Negev, which would later become Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, was established in 1969. The then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat visited Beersheba in 1979. In 1983, its population was more than 110,000. During the 1990s post-Soviet aliyah , the city's population greatly increased as many immigrants from the former Soviet Union settled there. As part of its Blueprint Negev project,

18910-529: The public in May 1918, serving the Negev and settlements south of Mount Hebron . In 1928, at the beginning of the tension between the Jews and the Arabs over control of Palestine and wide-scale rioting which left 133 Jews dead and 339 wounded, many Jews abandoned Beersheba, although some returned occasionally. After an Arab attack on a Jewish bus in 1936, which escalated into the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine ,

19065-529: The reforms of Diocletian, the town became part of the province of Palaestina Tertia and grew to an approximate size of 60 hectares during its peak in the 6th century. Beersheba was described in the Madaba Map and Eusebius of Caesarea as a large village with a Roman garrison. The camp was later identified in aerial photographs taken during the First World War and other structures associated with

19220-495: The region has been inhabited since the 4th millennium BC (between 5000 and 6,000 years ago). Tel Be'er Sheva , an archaeological site containing the ruins of an ancient town believed to have been the Biblical Beersheba, lies a few kilometers east of the modern city. The town dates to the early Israelite period , around the 10th century BCE. The site was possibly chosen due to the abundance of water, as evidenced by

19375-485: The related scripts of Palmyrene , Phoenician , and Imperial Aramaic as represented on the Carpentras Stele , Eduard Friedrich Ferdinand Beer published his reading of the Nabataean script in 1840. Texts of various length continued to be discovered and published by European scholars during the 19th and 20th century. This period also saw the publication of Cantineau's grammar of Nabataean Aramaic and lexicon with sample texts. Important finds after this publication include

19530-422: The remaining Jews left. At the time of the 1922 census of Palestine , Beersheba had a population of 2,356 (2,012 Muslims, 235 Christians, 98 Jews and 11 Druze ). At the time of the 1931 census , Beersheba had 545 occupied houses and a population of 2,959 (2,791 Muslims , 152 Christians, 11 Jews and five Baháʼí ). The 1938 village survey did not cover Beersheba due to the area's largely nomadic population and

19685-621: The rock beneath the town. During the Persian rule 539 BC–c. 332 BC Beersheba was at the south of Yehud Medinata autonomous province of the Persian Achaemenid Empire . During that era the city was rebuilt and a citadel had been constructed. Archeological finds from between 359 and 338 BC have been made, finding pottery and an ostracon . During the Hasmonean rule, the city was not attributed great importance as it

19840-521: The severely endangered Western Neo-Aramaic language is spoken by small Christian and Muslim communities in the Anti-Lebanon mountains , and closely related western varieties of Aramaic persisted in Mount Lebanon until as late as the 17th century. The term "Old Aramaic" is used to describe the varieties of the language from its first known use, until the point roughly marked by the rise of

19995-604: The singular; this is not expressed in the writing); based on other varieties of Aramaic, the expected absolute suffix for these nouns is -n , but this is unattested. Finally, the emphatic state, expressing definiteness , is formed by adding the suffix -ʔ to the construct state. The full paradigm is thus (example forms are of mlk 'king' and mlkh 'queen'; not all forms are actually attested): Frequent prepositions include b- 'in', l- 'to, for, of', k- 'according to', mn 'from', and ʕl 'on, about'. These can take pronominal suffixes, as in b h 'in it', l hm 'to them'. ʕl

20150-620: The situation with modern varieties of Arabic . Some Aramaic languages are known under different names; for example, Syriac is particularly used to describe the Eastern Aramaic variety spoken by Syriac Christian communities in northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, and northwestern Iran, and the Saint Thomas Christians in Kerala , India. Most dialects can be described as either "Eastern" or "Western",

20305-930: The subject and predicate, as in dnh (S) kprʔ ... (P) 'this is the grave ...'. Clauses can be coordinated by the conjunction w- 'and, but'. Most forms of subordinate clauses are introduced by the particle dy . Conditional clauses are introduced by hn 'if'. Most of the Nabataean basic vocabulary was inherited from older Aramaic. Examples of these inherited words include ʔb 'father', ʔm 'mother', br 'son', brt 'daughter', dkr 'male', and nqbh 'female'. Loanwords, however, are also common. Arabic and Ancient North Arabian loanwords have received special attention. Words like ʔṣdq 'heir' and kpr 'tomb' may have been borrowed from Dadanitic . Words thought to have been borrowed from Arabic include ḥlyqh 'custom' (Arabic ḫalīqah ), lʕn 'to curse' (Arabic laʕana ), and ʕyr 'other than' (Arabic ġayr ). The Nabataean kingdom's contacts with Hellenistic states and Rome also led to

20460-480: The third century onwards, the Nabataean script was increasingly used to write the Arabic language. Prominent examples include the mixed Aramaic-Arabic epitaph of RQWŠ daughter of ʕBDMWNTW ( JSNab 17 ) and the entirely Arabic Namara inscription . According to Jean Cantineau , this marked the beginning of the end of the widespread use of Nabataean Aramaic, which came to be replaced by Arabic. During this process, "Nabataean seems to have emptied itself little by little of

20615-495: The third person prefix conjugation are y- (third person masculine singular), t- (third person feminine singular), and y-...-wn (third person (masculine?) plural), as in y ʕbd 'he will make', t ʕbd 'she will make', and y ktb wn 'they will write'. Besides these finite conjugations, Nabataean Aramaic verbs form an infinitive . The G-stem infinitive is formed with a prefixed m- , as in m ktb 'to write'. The G-stem active participle does not have any special affixes and has

20770-596: The total number of Arabs driven out from Beersheva and surrounding areas reached 30,000 with many ending up in Jordan as refugees. Following Operation Yoav , a 10-kilometer radius exclusion zone around Beersheba was enforced into which no Bedouin were allowed. In response, the United Nations Security Council passed two resolutions on the November 4 and 16 demanding that Israel withdraw from

20925-509: The town in the form of a grid was developed by a Swiss and a German architect and two others. The grid pattern can be seen today in Beersheba's Old City. Most of the residents at the time were Arabs from Hebron and the Gaza area, although Jews also began settling in the city. Many Bedouin abandoned their nomadic lives and built homes in Beersheba. During World War I , the Ottomans built

21080-546: The various languages and dialects that are Aramaic. The earliest Aramaic alphabet was based on the Phoenician alphabet . In time, Aramaic developed its distinctive "square" style. The ancient Israelites and other peoples of Canaan adopted this alphabet for writing their own languages. Thus, it is better known as the Hebrew alphabet . This is the writing system used in Biblical Aramaic and other Jewish writing in Aramaic. The other main writing system used for Aramaic

21235-579: The various native Iranian languages . Aramaic script and – as ideograms – Aramaic vocabulary would survive as the essential characteristics of the Pahlavi scripts . One of the largest collections of Imperial Aramaic texts is that of the Persepolis Administrative Archives , found at Persepolis , which number about five hundred. Many of the extant documents witnessing to this form of Aramaic come from Egypt , and Elephantine in particular (see Elephantine papyri ). Of them,

21390-465: The well back. He set aside seven lambs to swear that it was he that had dug the well and no one else. Abimelech conceded that the well belonged to Abraham and, in the Bible, Beersheba means "Well of Seven" or "Well of the Oath". Beersheba is further mentioned in the following Bible passages: Isaac built an altar in Beersheba (Genesis 26:23–33). Jacob had his dream about a stairway to heaven after leaving Beersheba. (Genesis 28:10–15 and 46:1–7). Beersheba

21545-413: The well which they had dug, and they said to him, "We found water." And he called it Shib'a ("seven" normally, possibly "oath" or a proper noun); therefore the name of the city is Be'er Sheba to this day. The original Hebrew name could therefore relate to the oath of Abraham and Abimelech ('well of the oath') or the seven ewes in that oath ('well of the seven'), as related in Genesis 21:31 , and/or to

21700-493: The whole kingdom. Zibiah , the consort of King Ahaziah of Judah and the mother of King Jehoash of Judah , was from Beersheba. The city has been destroyed and rebuilt many times. Considered unimportant for centuries, Be’er Sheva regained notoriety under Byzantine rule (in the 4th–7th century), when it was a key point on the Limes Palestinae , a defense line built against the desert tribes; however, it fell to

21855-574: The women, children, disabled and elderly were driven by truck to the Gaza border. The Egyptian soldiers were interned in POW camps. Some men lived in the local mosque and were put to work cleaning, however, when it was discovered that they were supplying information to the Egyptian army, they were also deported. The town was subject to large-scale looting by the Haganah , and by December, in one calculation,

22010-436: Was Mandaic , which besides becoming a vernacular, Neo-Mandaic , also remained the liturgical language of Mandaeism . Syriac was also the liturgical language of several now-extinct gnostic faiths, such as Manichaeism . Neo-Aramaic languages are still spoken in the 21st century as a first language by many communities of Assyrians , Mizrahi Jews (in particular, the Jews of Kurdistan / Iraqi Jews ), and Mandaeans of

22165-463: Was built in the city. The station has a glass-enclosed complex also containing shops and cafés. Some $ 10.5  million was also invested in renovating Beersheba's Old City, preserving historical buildings and upgrading infrastructure. The Turkish Quarter was also redeveloped with newly cobbled streets, widened sidewalks, and the restoration of Turkish homes into areas for dining and shopping. In 2011, city hall announced plans to turn Beersheba into

22320-537: Was built to serve as an administrative center by the Ottoman administration for the benefit of the Bedouin at the outset of the 20th century and was given the name of Bir al-Sabi (well of the seven). Until World War I , it was an overwhelmingly Muslim township with some 1,000 residents. Ben-David and Kressel have argued that the Bedouin traditional market was the cornerstone for the founding of Beersheba as capital of

22475-796: Was developed by Christian communities: a cursive form known as the Syriac alphabet . A highly modified form of the Aramaic alphabet, the Mandaic alphabet , is used by the Mandaeans . In addition to these writing systems, certain derivatives of the Aramaic alphabet were used in ancient times by particular groups: the Nabataean alphabet in Petra and the Palmyrene alphabet in Palmyra . In modern times, Turoyo (see below ) has sometimes been written in

22630-405: Was entrusted to a special bureau of the Ministry of the Interior. The British incorporation of Sinai into Egypt led to a need for the Ottomans to consolidate their hold on southern Palestine. There was also a desire to encourage the Bedouin to become sedentary, with a predicted increase of tranquility and tax revenue. The first governor ( kaymakam ), Isma'il Kamal Bey, lived in a tent lent by

22785-475: Was first identified in 1679 by German theologian Johann Wilhelm Hilliger . In 1819–21 Ulrich Friedrich Kopp published his Bilder und Schriften der Vorzeit ("Images and Inscriptions of the Past"), in which he established the basis of the paleographical development of the Northwest Semitic scripts. Kopp criticised Jean-Jacques Barthélemy and other scholars who had characterized all the then-known inscriptions and coins as Phoenician, with "everything left to

22940-477: Was found in Hegra. An even later graffito, dated to 455/6 AD and written in Nabataeo-Arabic characters, was discovered in 2004 at Jabal Umm Jadhayidh in north-western Saudi Arabia , but its Aramaic content is limited to stock formulas, the non-formulaic text being entirely Arabic. The existence of thousands of Nabataean graffiti in the Sinai desert , originally referred to as "Sinaitic", had long been known. Based on Jean-Jacques Barthélemy 's earlier decipherment of

23095-409: Was not mentioned when conquered from Edom or described in the Hasmonean wars . Around 64-63 BC, the Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus made Beersheba, known as Birosaba , the southern part of the Judea province. During the Herodian period there was a small settlement in Beersheba. Remains of a Jewish village dating back to the 1st century AD were discovered in the Harkapet neighborhood in

23250-431: Was part of a wider British offensive in aimed at breaking the Turkish defensive line from Gaza to Beersheba. The Ottoman army engaged in three battles with the British forces near Gaza between March 26 and November 7, 1917. Having failed in the First and Second Battles of Gaza , the British succeeded in the Third Battle of Gaza . On October 31, 1917, three months after taking Rafah , General Allenby 's troops breached

23405-472: Was rapidly settled by new immigrants and has since developed as the administrative, cultural, and industrial centre of the Negev. It is one of the largest cities in Israel outside of metropolitan Tel Aviv , Jerusalem , and Haifa . Human settlement in the area dates from the Copper Age . The inhabitants lived in caves, crafting metal tools and raising cattle. Findings unearthed at Tel Be'er Sheva , an archaeological site east of modern-day Beersheba, suggest

23560-402: Was the territory of the tribe of Simeon and Judah ( Joshua 15:28 and 19:2). The sons of the prophet Samuel were judges in Beersheba ( I Samuel 8:2). Saul , Israel's first king, built a fort there for his campaign against the Amalekites (I Samuel 14:48 and 15:2–9). The prophet Elijah took refuge in Beersheba when Jezebel ordered him killed ( I Kings 19:3). The prophet Amos mentions

23715-400: Was turned into a city center, with shops, restaurants, and government and utility offices. An industrial area and one of the largest cinemas in Israel were also built in the city. By 1956, Beersheba was a booming city of 22,000. In 1959, during the Wadi Salib riots , riots spread quickly to other parts of the country, including Beersheba. Soroka Hospital opened its doors in 1960. By 1968,

23870-412: Was written with the same sign as /ʃ/ (a practice dating back to the Ancient Aramaic period). Cantineau states that the phonetic value of this sound is uncertain and suggests it may have been palatalized; the realization as a lateral fricative is argued in later scholarship. The evidence for the preservation of the uvular fricatives /χ/ and /ʁ/ or their merger with pharyngeal /ħ/ and /ʕ/ as in later Aramaic

24025-431: Was written. Only careful examination reveals the occasional loan word from a local language. A group of thirty Aramaic documents from Bactria have been discovered, and an analysis was published in November 2006. The texts, which were rendered on leather, reflect the use of Aramaic in the 4th century BC Achaemenid administration of Bactria and Sogdia . Biblical Aramaic is the Aramaic found in four discrete sections of

#584415