Achaemenid Aramaic
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Imperial Aramaic is a
linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
term, coined by modern scholars in order to designate a specific historical
variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
of Aramaic language. The term is polysemic, with two distinctive meanings, wider (
sociolinguistic Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of l ...
) and narrower ( dialectological). Some scholars use the term as a designation for a distinctive, socially prominent phase in the history of Aramaic language, that lasted from the middle of the 8th century BCE to the end of the 4th century BCE and was marked by the use of Aramaic as a language of public life and administration in the late
Neo-Assyrian Empire The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...
and its successor states, the
Neo-Babylonian Empire The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC and bei ...
and the Achaemenid Empire, also adding to that some later (Post-Imperial) uses that persisted throughout the early
Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
period. Other scholars use the term ''Imperial Aramaic'' in a narrower sense, reduced only to the Achaemenid period, basing that reduction on several strictly linguistic distinctions between the previous (Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian) phase and later (more prominent) Achaemenid phase. Since all of those phases can be semantically labelled as "imperial", some scholars opt for the use of more specific and unambiguous terms, like ''Neo-Assyrian Aramaic'' and ''Neo-Babylonian Aramaic'' (for the older phases), and ''Achaemenid Aramaic'' (for the later phase), thus avoiding the use of the polysemic "imperial" label, and its primarily sociolinguistic implications. Similar issues have arisen in relation to the uses of some alternative terms, like ''Official Aramaic'' or ''Standard Aramaic'', that were also criticized as unspecific. All of those terms continue to be used differently by scholars.


Name and classification

The term "Imperial Aramaic" was first coined by Josef Markwart in 1927, calling the language by the German name '. In 1955, Aga Khan Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
Richard N. Frye noted that no extant edict expressly or ambiguously accorded the status of "
official language An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...
" to any particular language, causing him to question the classification of Imperial Aramaic. Frye went on to reclassify Imperial Aramaic as the '' lingua franca'' used in the territories of the Achaemenid Empire, further suggesting that the language’s use was more prevalent in these areas than initially thought.


History

The native speakers of Aramaic, the Arameans, settled in great numbers in Babylonia and
Upper Mesopotamia Upper Mesopotamia is the name used for the uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey, in the northern Middle East. Since the early Muslim conquests of the mid-7th century, the region has been ...
during the ages of the
Neo-Assyrian The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history and the final and greatest phase of Assyria as an independent state. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew t ...
and
Neo-Babylonian Empire The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC and bei ...
s. The massive influx of settlers led to the adoption of Aramaic as the ''lingua franca'' of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. After the Achaemenid conquest of Mesopotamia in 539 BC, the Achaemenids continued the use of Aramaic as the language of the region, further extending its prevalence by making it the imperial standard (thus "Imperial" Aramaic) so it may be the "vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast empire with its different peoples and languages." The adoption of a single official language for the various regions of the empire has been cited as a reason for the at the time unprecedented success of the Achaemenids in maintaining the expanse of their empire for a period of centuries.


Sources

One of the most extensive collections of texts written in Imperial Aramaic is the Fortification Tablets of Persepolis, of which there are about five hundred. Other extant examples of Imperial Aramaic come from
Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
, such as the
Elephantine papyri The Elephantine Papyri and Ostraca consist of thousands of documents from the Egyptian border fortresses of Elephantine and Aswan, which yielded hundreds of papyri and ostraca in hieratic and demotic Egyptian, Aramaic, Koine Greek, Latin and Co ...
. Egyptian examples also includes the '' Words of Ahikar'', a piece of
wisdom literature Wisdom literature is a genre of literature common in the ancient Near East. It consists of statements by sages and the wise that offer teachings about divinity and virtue. Although this genre uses techniques of traditional oral storytelling, it w ...
reminiscent of the Book of Proverbs. Scholarly consensus regards the portions of the
Book of Daniel The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th century BC setting. Ostensibly "an account of the activities and visions of Daniel, a noble Jew exiled at Babylon", it combines a prophecy of history with an eschatology ...
(i.e., 2:4b-7:28) written in Aramaic as an example of Imperial Aramaic. In November 2006, an analysis was published of thirty newly discovered Aramaic documents from Bactria which now constitute the
Khalili Collection of Aramaic Documents The Khalili Collection of Aramaic Documents is a private collection of letters and documents from the Bactria region in present-day Afghanistan, assembled by the British-Iranian collector and philanthropist Nasser Khalili, Nasser D. Khalili. It i ...
. The leather parchment contains texts written in Imperial Aramaic, reflecting the use of the language for Achaemenid administrative purposes during the fourth century in regions such as Bactria and Sogdia.


Legacy and influence

The evolution of alphabets from the Mediterranean region is commonly split into two major divisions: the Phoenician-derived alphabets of the West, including the Mediterranean region (
Anatolia Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The ...
,
Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...
, and the Italian peninsula), and the Aramaic-derived alphabets of the East, including the
Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is ...
,
Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
,
Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...
, and the
Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...
. The former Phoenician-derived alphabets arose around the 8th century BC, and the latter Aramaic-derived alphabets evolved from the Imperial Aramaic script around the 6th century BC. After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the unity of the Imperial Aramaic script was lost, diversifying into a number of descendant cursives. Aramaic script and, as ideograms, Aramaic vocabulary would survive as the essential characteristics of the
Pahlavi scripts Pahlavi is a particular, exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages. The essential characteristics of Pahlavi are: *the use of a specific Aramaic-derived script; *the incidence of Aramaic words used as heterograms (called '' ...
, itself developing from the
Manichaean alphabet The Manichaean script is an abjad-based writing system rooted in the Semitic family of alphabets and associated with the spread of Manichaeism from southwest to central Asia and beyond, beginning in the 3rd century CE. It bears a sibling relation ...
. The orthography of Imperial Aramaic was based more on its own historical roots than on any spoken dialect, leading to a high standardization of the language across the expanse of the Achaemenid Empire. Of the Imperial Aramaic glyphs extant from its era, there are two main styles: the ''lapidary'' form, often inscribed on hard surfaces like stone monuments, and the ''cursive'' form. The Achaemenid Empire used both of these styles, but the cursive became much more prominent than the lapidary, causing the latter to eventually disappear by the 3rd century BC. In remote regions, the cursive versions of Aramaic evolved into the creation of the
Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...
, Palmyrene and
Mandaic alphabet The Mandaic alphabet is thought to have evolved between the 2nd and 7th century CE from either a cursive form of Aramaic (as did Syriac) or from the Parthian chancery script. The exact roots of the script are difficult to determine. It was deve ...
s, which themselves formed the basis of many historical Central Asian scripts, such as the Sogdian and Mongolian alphabets. The
Brahmi script Brahmi (; ; ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system of ancient South Asia. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as 'lath' ...
, of which the entire
Brahmic family of scripts The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...
derives (including
Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...
), most likely descends from Imperial Aramaic, as the empire of Cyrus the Great brought the borders of the Persian Empire all the way to the edge of the Indian subcontinent, with
Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to ...
and his successors further linking the lands through trade.


Hebrew

The Babylonian Captivity ended after Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon. The mass-prevalence of Imperial Aramaic in the region resulted in the eventual use of the Aramaic alphabet for writing
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
. Before the adoption of Imperial Aramaic, Hebrew was written in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, which, along with Aramaic, directly descended from Phoenician. Hebrew and Aramaic heavily influenced one another, with mostly religious Hebrew words (such as "wood”) transferring into Aramaic and more general Aramaic vocabulary (such as ''māmmôn'' "wealth") entering the local Hebrew lexicon. Late Old Western Aramaic, also known as Jewish Old Palestinian, is a well-attested language used by the communities of
Judea Judea or Judaea ( or ; from he, יהודה, Standard ''Yəhūda'', Tiberian ''Yehūḏā''; el, Ἰουδαία, ; la, Iūdaea) is an ancient, historic, Biblical Hebrew, contemporaneous Latin, and the modern-day name of the mountainous sou ...
, probably originating in the area of
Caesarea Philippi Banias or Banyas ( ar, بانياس الحولة; he, בניאס, label=Modern Hebrew; Judeo-Aramaic, Medieval Hebrew: פמייס, etc.; grc, Πανεάς) is a site in the Golan Heights near a natural spring, once associated with the Greek g ...
. By the 1st century CE, the people of Roman Judaea still used Aramaic as their primary language, along with
Koine Greek Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...
for commerce and administration. The oldest manuscript of the Book of Enoch (c. 170 BC) is written in the Late Old Western Aramaic dialect. The Koine Greek used in the
New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...
has many non-Greek terms of Aramaic origin, such as: * ''Talitha'' (ταλιθα) that can represent the noun ' (Mark 5:41). * ''Rabbounei'' (Ραββουνει), which stands for “ my master/great one/teacher” in both Hebrew and Aramaic (John 20:16).


Nabataean Aramaic

Instead of using their native
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
, the Nabataeans would use Imperial Aramaic for their written communications, causing the development of
Nabataean Aramaic Nabataean Aramaic is the Aramaic variety used in inscriptions by the Nabataeans of the East Bank of the Jordan River, the Negev, and the Sinai Peninsula. Compared to other varieties of Aramaic, it is notable for the occurrence of a number of loa ...
out of Imperial Aramaic. The standardized cursive and Aramaic-derived
Nabataean alphabet The Nabataean script is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) that was used to write Nabataean Aramaic and Nabataean Arabic from the second century BC onwards.Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
for the Arabian peninsula, evolving on its own into the alphabet of Arabic by the time of
spread of Islam The spread of Islam spans about 1,400 years. Muslim conquests following Muhammad's death led to the creation of the caliphates, occupying a vast geographical area; conversion to Islam was boosted by Arab Muslim forces conquering vast territorie ...
centuries later. Influences from Arabic were present in the Nabataean Aramaic, such as a few Arabic loanwords and how "l" is often turned into "n". After Nabataea was annexed by the
Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediter ...
in 106 AD, the influence of Aramaic declined in favor of
Koine Greek Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...
for written communication.


Manichaean

The Manichaean
abjad An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...
writing system spread from the Near East over into
Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...
, travelling as far as the
Tarim Basin The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in Northwest China occupying an area of about and one of the largest basins in Northwest China.Chen, Yaning, et al. "Regional climate change and its effects on river runoff in the Tarim Basin, China." Hydr ...
in what is now the
People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
. Its presence in Central Asia lead to influence from the Sogdian script, which itself descends from the
Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...
branch of Aramaic. The traditions of
Manichaeism Manichaeism (; in New Persian ; ) is a former major religionR. van den Broek, Wouter J. Hanegraaff ''Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times''SUNY Press, 1998 p. 37 founded in the 3rd century AD by the Parthian Empire, Parthian ...
allege that its founding prophet, Mani, invented the Manichaean script, as well as writing the major Manichaean texts himself. The writing system evolved from the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, which was still in use during the age of Mani, i.e. the early years of the
Sassanian Empire The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the History of Iran, last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th cen ...
. Along with other writing systems, the Manichaean alphabet evolved into the
Pahlavi script Pahlavi is a particular, exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages. The essential characteristics of Pahlavi are: *the use of a specific Aramaic-derived script; *the incidence of Aramaic words used as heterograms (called '' ...
and was used to write
Middle Persian Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle ...
, and other languages which were influenced by Manichaean include: Parthian, Sogdian, Bactrian, and Old Uyghur.


Unicode

Imperial Aramaic is a
Unicode block A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes ( code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and documentation purposes. Typically, proposals such as the ...
containing characters for writing Aramaic during the
Achaemenid Persian Empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest emp ...
s.


References


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{refend Aramaic languages Aramaic alphabet Persian scripts Neo-Assyrian Empire Neo-Babylonian Empire Achaemenid Empire