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103-535: The name Yabroud is said to have originated from an Aramaic word meaning "cold"; the city rests upon the Qalamoun Mountains slopes ( Anti-Lebanon ) at a height of 1,550 m. The city is known for its ancient caves, most notably the Iskafta cave (where, in 1930, a thirty-year-old German traveller and self-taught archeologist Alfred Rust made many important pre-historical findings), which dates back to

206-954: 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

309-705: A stylus , their forms are mostly angular and straight, though cursive forms increased in use over time, culminating in the Neo-Punic alphabet used in Roman North Africa . The earliest known proto-alphabetic inscriptions are the Proto-Sinaitic script sporadically attested in the Sinai Peninsula and in Canaan in the late Middle and Late Bronze Age . The script was not widely used until

412-566: 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

515-572: A combination of two 10-tacks, approximately Z-shaped. Larger multiples of ten were formed by grouping the appropriate number of 20s and 10s. There existed several glyph variants for 100 (𐤙). The 100 symbol could be multiplied by a preceding numeral, e.g. the combination of 4 and 100 yielded 400. The system did not contain a numeral zero . Phoenician was prolific. Many of the writing systems in use today can ultimately trace their descent to it, so ultimately to Egyptian hieroglyphs . The Latin , Cyrillic , Armenian and Georgian scripts are derived from

618-636: 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 )

721-710: 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

824-543: A period known as Jabroudian culture , named after Yabroud; and the Yabroud temple, which was once Jupiter Yabroudis ' s temple but later became " Konstantin and Helena Cathedral ". Yabroud is home of the oldest church in Syria. The Natufian archeological site Yabroud III is named for the town of Yabroud. Yabroud was mentioned in the pottery tablets of Mesopotamia in the 1st century B.C., and Ptolemy 's writings in

927-746: 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

1030-522: 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

1133-958: 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

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1236-430: Is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia , the southern Levant , southeastern Anatolia , Eastern Arabia and the Sinai Peninsula , where it has been continually written and spoken in different varieties for over three thousand years. Aramaic served as a language of public life and administration of ancient kingdoms and empires, and also as

1339-537: Is a further derivation from Sogdian. The Arabic script is a medieval cursive variant of Nabataean , itself an offshoot of Aramaic. It has been proposed, notably by Georg Bühler (1898), that the Brahmi script of India (and by extension the derived Indic alphabets ) was ultimately derived from the Aramaic script, which would make Phoenician the ancestor of virtually every alphabetic writing system in use today, with

1442-502: Is a regional variant of the Phoenician alphabet, so called when used to write early Hebrew . The Samaritan alphabet is a development of Paleo-Hebrew, emerging in the 6th century BC. The South Arabian script may be derived from a stage of the Proto-Sinaitic script predating the mature development of the Phoenician alphabet proper. The Geʽez script developed from South Arabian. The Phoenician alphabet continued to be used by

1545-462: Is almost impossible to understand because they are not related to any living languages. While Gómez-Moreno first pointed to a joined Phoenician-Greek origin, following authors consider that their genesis has no relation to Greek. The most remote script of the group is the Tartessian or Southwest script which could be one or several different scripts. The main bulk of PH inscriptions use, by far,

1648-567: 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

1751-539: Is controversial, engraved on the sarcophagus of king Ahiram in Byblos, Lebanon, one of five known Byblian royal inscriptions , shows essentially the fully developed Phoenician script, although the name "Phoenician" is by convention given to inscriptions beginning in the mid-11th century BC. Beginning in the 9th century BC, adaptations of the Phoenician alphabet thrived, including Greek , Old Italic and Anatolian scripts. The alphabet's attractive innovation

1854-497: Is derived from Italic, the Cyrillic alphabet from medieval Greek. The Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic scripts are derived from Aramaic (the latter as a medieval cursive variant of Nabataean ). Ge'ez is from South Arabian . Phoenician used a system of acrophony to name letters: a word was chosen with each initial consonant sound, and became the name of the letter for that sound. These names were not arbitrary: each Phoenician letter

1957-512: Is derived from the Phoenician. With a different phonology, the Greeks adapted the Phoenician script to represent their own sounds, including the vowels absent in Phoenician. It was possibly more important in Greek to write out vowel sounds: Phoenician being a Semitic language, words were based on consonantal roots that permitted extensive removal of vowels without loss of meaning, a feature absent in

2060-417: 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

2163-427: 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

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2266-456: 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

2369-506: 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

2472-481: 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,

2575-521: 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

2678-495: 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

2781-741: The Arabic alphabet . The Hebrew alphabet emerges in the Second Temple period , from around 300 BC, out of the Aramaic alphabet used in the Persian empire. There was, however, a revival of the Phoenician mode of writing later in the Second Temple period, with some instances from the Qumran Caves , such as the Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll dated to the 2nd or 1st century BC. By the 5th century BC, among Jews

2884-690: 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 ,

2987-547: 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

3090-653: The Early Iron Age , sub-categorized by historians as Phoenician , Hebrew , Moabite , Ammonite and Edomite , as well as Old Aramaic . It was widely disseminated outside of the Canaanite sphere by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean, where it was adopted and adapted by other cultures. The Phoenician alphabet proper was used in Ancient Carthage until the 2nd century BC, where it

3193-640: 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

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3296-588: The Greek alphabet , which evolved from Phoenician; the Aramaic alphabet , also descended from Phoenician, evolved into the Arabic and Hebrew scripts. It has also been theorised that the Brahmi and subsequent Brahmic scripts of the Indian cultural sphere also descended from Aramaic, effectively uniting most of the world's writing systems under one family, although the theory is disputed. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet

3399-586: The Indo-European Greek. However, Akkadian cuneiform , which wrote a related Semitic language, did indicate vowels, which suggests the Phoenicians simply accepted the model of the Egyptians, who never wrote vowels. In any case, the Greeks repurposed the Phoenician letters of consonant sounds not present in Greek; each such letter had its name shorn of its leading consonant, and the letter took

3502-528: 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

3605-693: 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"

3708-750: The Northeastern Iberian script , which serves to write Iberian in the levantine coast North of Contestania and in the valle of the river Ebro (Hiber). The Iberic language is also recorded using two other scripts: the Southeastern Iberian script , which is more similar to the Southwest script than to Northeastern Iberian; and a variant of the Ionic Greek Alphabet called the Greco-Iberian alphabet . Finally,

3811-682: 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

3914-527: The Samaritans and developed into the Samaritan alphabet, that is an immediate continuation of the Phoenician script without intermediate non-Israelite evolutionary stages. The Samaritans have continued to use the script for writing both Hebrew and Aramaic texts until the present day. A comparison of the earliest Samaritan inscriptions and the medieval and modern Samaritan manuscripts clearly indicates that

4017-470: 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

4120-492: 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

4223-787: 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

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4326-511: The history of writing systems , the Phoenician script also marked the first to have a fixed writing direction —while previous systems were multi-directional, Phoenician was written horizontally, from right to left. It developed directly from the Proto-Sinaitic script used during the Late Bronze Age , which was derived in turn from Egyptian hieroglyphs . The Phoenician alphabet was used to write Canaanite languages spoken during

4429-551: 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

4532-600: 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

4635-439: The 11th century. The oldest inscriptions are dated to the 10th century. The Phoenician alphabet was deciphered in 1758 by Jean-Jacques Barthélemy , but its relation to the Phoenicians remained unknown until the 19th century. It was at first believed that the script was a direct variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs , which were deciphered by Champollion in the early 19th century. However, scholars could not find any link between

4738-872: The 2nd century A.D. In 1838, its inhabitants were Sunni Muslim , Melkite Catholic and Greek Orthodox Christians . During the Syrian Civil War the city was the center of the Battle of Yabroud in March 2014. 33°58′N 36°40′E  /  33.967°N 36.667°E  / 33.967; 36.667 This article about a location in Rif Dimashq Governorate , Syria is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Aramaic language Aramaic ( Jewish Babylonian Aramaic : ארמית , romanized:  ˀərāmiṯ ; Classical Syriac : ܐܪܡܐܝܬ , romanized:  arāmāˀiṯ )

4841-408: 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

4944-440: The 3rd century BC (although some letter shapes did not become standard until the 1st century AD). The Kharosthi script is an Aramaic-derived alphasyllabary used in the Indo-Greek Kingdom in the 3rd century BC. The Syriac alphabet is the derived form of Aramaic used in the early Christian period. The Sogdian alphabet is derived from Syriac. It is in turn an ancestor of the Old Uyghur . The Manichaean alphabet

5047-470: 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

5150-418: 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

5253-511: 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

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5356-407: 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 ,

5459-545: 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

5562-405: 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

5665-400: The Common Era. According to Herodotus , the Phoenician prince Cadmus was accredited with the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet— phoinikeia grammata 'Phoenician letters'—to the Greeks, who adapted it to form their Greek alphabet . Herodotus claims that the Greeks did not know of the Phoenician alphabet before Cadmus. He estimates that Cadmus lived 1600 years before his time, while

5768-438: 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

5871-422: The Greeks kept approximations of the Phoenician names, albeit they did not mean anything to them other than the letters themselves; on the other hand, the Latins (and presumably the Etruscans from whom they borrowed a variant of the Western Greek alphabet ) and the Orthodox Slavs (at least when naming the Cyrillic letters, which came to them from the Greek by way of the Glagolitic ) based their names purely on

5974-432: 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

6077-405: The Jewish community from the start, and Hasmonaean was the old standard. Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet ) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, and attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region . In

6180-412: The Latin alphabet itself, some early Old Italic alphabet via the Alpine scripts, or the Greek alphabet. Despite this debate, the Runic alphabet is clearly derived from one or more scripts that ultimately trace their roots back to the Phoenician alphabet. The Coptic alphabet is mostly based on the mature Greek alphabet of the Hellenistic period , with a few additional letters for sounds not in Greek at

6283-438: 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

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6386-425: The Phoenician alphabet had been mostly replaced by the Aramaic alphabet as officially used in the Persian empire (which, like all alphabetical writing systems, was itself ultimately a descendant of the Proto-Canaanite script, though through intermediary non-Israelite stages of evolution). The " Jewish square-script " variant now known simply as the Hebrew alphabet evolved directly out of the Aramaic script by about

6489-402: The Phoenician letter was called bet and had the sound value b . According to a 1904 theory by Theodor Nöldeke , some of the letter names were changed in Phoenician from the Proto-Canaanite script. This includes: Yigael Yadin (1963) went to great lengths to prove that there was actual battle equipment similar to some of the original letter forms named for weapons (samek, zayin). Later,

6592-414: The Phoenician letters for those consonants as well.) The Alphabets of Asia Minor are generally assumed to be offshoots of archaic versions of the Greek alphabet. The Latin alphabet was derived from Old Italic (originally derived from a form of the Greek alphabet), used for Etruscan and other languages. The origin of the Runic alphabet is disputed: the main theories are that it evolved either from

6695-404: 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

6798-407: The Samaritan script is a static script which was used mainly as a book hand . The Aramaic alphabet, used to write Aramaic , is an early descendant of Phoenician. Aramaic, being the lingua franca of the Middle East, was widely adopted. It later split off into a number of related alphabets, including Hebrew , Syriac , and Nabataean , the latter of which, in its cursive form, became an ancestor of

6901-440: 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

7004-532: The alphabet into parts of North Africa and Southern Europe. Phoenician inscriptions have been found in archaeological sites at a number of former Phoenician cities and colonies around the Mediterranean, such as Byblos (in present-day Lebanon ) and Carthage in North Africa. Later finds indicate earlier use in Egypt. The alphabet had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations that came in contact with it. Its simplicity not only allowed its easy adaptation to multiple languages, but it also allowed

7107-428: 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

7210-404: 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

7313-468: The common people to learn how to write. This upset the long-standing status of literacy as an exclusive achievement of royal and religious elites, scribes who used their monopoly on information to control the common population. The appearance of Phoenician disintegrated many of these class divisions, although many Middle Eastern kingdoms, such as Assyria , Babylonia and Adiabene , would continue to use cuneiform for legal and liturgical matters well into

7416-555: The consonant-only Phoenician letters. There were also distinct variants of the writing system in different parts of Greece, primarily in how those Phoenician characters that did not have an exact match to Greek sounds were used. The Ionic variant evolved into the standard Greek alphabet, and the Cumae variant into the Italic alphabets (including the Latin alphabet ). The Runic alphabet

7519-585: 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

7622-543: 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

7725-431: 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

7828-580: 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

7931-625: 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

8034-501: The historical adoption of the alphabet by the Greeks was barely 350 years before Herodotus. The Phoenician alphabet was known to the Jewish sages of the Second Temple era , who called it the "Old Hebrew" ( Paleo-Hebrew ) script. The conventional date of 1050 BC for the emergence of the Phoenician script was chosen because there is a gap in the epigraphic record; there are not actually any Phoenician inscriptions securely dated to

8137-507: 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

8240-422: The initial creation of new alphabets and from gradual pronunciation changes which did not immediately lead to spelling changes. The Phoenician letter forms shown are idealized: actual Phoenician writing is less uniform, with significant variations by era and region. When alphabetic writing began, with the early Greek alphabet , the letter forms were similar but not identical to Phoenician, and vowels were added to

8343-414: The letters' sounds. The Phoenician numeral system consisted of separate symbols for 1, 10, 20, and 100. The sign for 1 was a simple vertical stroke (𐤖). Other numerals up to 9 were formed by adding the appropriate number of such strokes, arranged in groups of three. The symbol for 10 was a horizontal line or tack ( 𐤗 ‎). The sign for 20 (𐤘) could come in different glyph variants, one of them being

8446-514: 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

8549-586: 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

8652-634: 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

8755-403: 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,

8858-563: The notable exception of hangul . It is certain that the Aramaic-derived Kharosthi script was present in northern India by the 4th century BC, so that the Aramaic model of alphabetic writing would have been known in the region, but the link from Kharosthi to the slightly younger Brahmi is tenuous. Bühler's suggestion is still entertained in mainstream scholarship, but it has never been proven conclusively, and no definitive scholarly consensus exists. The Greek alphabet

8961-407: 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

9064-481: 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,

9167-417: The rise of Syro-Hittite states in the 13th and 12th centuries BC. The Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the "Proto-Canaanite" script of the Bronze Age collapse period. The inscriptions found on the Phoenician arrowheads at al-Khader near Bethlehem and dated c.  1100 BC offered the epigraphists the "missing link" between the two. The Ahiram epitaph , whose dating

9270-521: 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

9373-620: 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",

9476-551: The time. Those additional letters are based on the Demotic script . The Cyrillic script was derived from the late (medieval) Greek alphabet. Some Cyrillic letters (generally for sounds not in medieval Greek) are based on Glagolitic forms. These were an indigenous set of genetically related semisyllabaries , which suited the phonological characteristics of the Tartessian , Iberian and Celtiberian languages. They were deciphered in 1922 by Manuel Gómez-Moreno but their content

9579-577: The two writing systems, nor to hieratic or cuneiform. The theories of independent creation ranged from the idea of a single individual conceiving it, to the Hyksos people forming it from corrupt Egyptian. It was eventually discovered that the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet was inspired by the model of hieroglyphs. The chart shows the graphical evolution of Phoenician letter forms into other alphabets. The sound values also changed significantly, both at

9682-477: The value of the now-leading vowel. For example, ʾāleph , which designated a glottal stop in Phoenician, was repurposed to represent the vowel /a/ ; he became /e/ , ḥet became /eː/ (a long vowel), ʿayin became /o/ (because the pharyngeality altered the following vowel), while the two semi-consonants wau and yod became the corresponding high vowels, /u/ and /i/ . (Some dialects of Greek, which did possess /h/ and /w/ , continued to use

9785-546: 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

9888-579: 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,

9991-436: 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

10094-522: Was based on an Egyptian hieroglyph representing an Egyptian word; this word was translated into Phoenician (or a closely related Semitic language), then the initial sound of the translated word became the letter's Phoenician value. For example, the second letter of the Phoenician alphabet was based on the Egyptian hieroglyph for "house" (a sketch of a house); the Semitic word for 'house' was bet ; hence

10197-848: 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

10300-594: 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

10403-446: Was its phonetic nature, in which one sound was represented by one symbol , which meant only a few dozen symbols to learn. The other scripts of the time, cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs , employed many complex characters and required long professional training to achieve proficiency; which had restricted literacy to a small elite. Another reason for its success was the maritime trading culture of Phoenician merchants, which spread

10506-575: Was used to write the Punic language . Its direct descendant scripts include the Aramaic and Samaritan alphabets, several Alphabets of Asia Minor , and the Archaic Greek alphabets . The Phoenician alphabet proper uses 22 consonant letters—as an abjad used to write a Semitic language, the vowel sounds were left implicit—though late varieties sometimes used matres lectionis to denote some vowels . As its letters were originally incised using

10609-487: 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

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