Samalian was a Semitic language spoken in

Samʼal Samal, also Yadiya or Zincirli Höyük, is an archaeological site located in the Anti-Taurus Mountains of modern Turkey's Gaziantep Province. It was founded at least as far back as the Early Bronze Age and thrived between 3000 and 2000 BC, and on ...

. Samalian is primarily known from three inscriptions, the

Hadad Statue The Hadad Statue is an 8th-century BC stele of King Panamuwa I, from the Kingdom of Bit-Gabbari in Sam'al. It is currently occupies a prominent position in the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin. The inscription was discovered in 1890 in a villag ...

and the

Panamuwa II inscription The Panamuwa II inscription is a 9th-century BC stele of King Panamuwa II, from the Kingdom of Bit-Gabbari in Sam'al. It currently occupies a prominent position in the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin. The 23 line inscription was discovered in ...

( KAI 214–215), both unearthed in the late 19th century, and a third known as the

Kuttamuwa stele The Kuttamuwa stele is an 800-pound basalt funerary stele with an Aramaic inscription referring to Kuttamuwa, an 8th-century BC royal official. It was found in Sam'al, in southeastern Turkey, in 2008, by the Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental ...

, unearthed in 2008.

Classification

Among the Semitic languages, Samalian shows most similarities to

Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...

. It has been earlier often considered an outright early dialect of Aramaic, possibly influenced by Canaanite. Strong evidence is however absent, and Samalian is best considered an independent member of the

Northwest Semitic Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic language, Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite ...

group, or, together with the

Deir Alla Inscription The Deir 'Alla Inscription (or Bal'am Son of Be'or Inscription), known as KAI 312, was discovered during a 1967 excavation in Deir 'Alla, Jordan. It is currently at the Jordan Archaeological Museum. It is written in a peculiar Northwest Semitic di ...

, a sister variety of Aramaic in an "Aramoid" or "Syrian" group.

Linguistic features

Features connecting Samalian with Aramaic include: * a change *n > ''r'' in the word ''br'' 'son', though this is attested only as a part of personal names and may not have been the native word. The same phenomenon appears also in a Phoenician text from Sam'al (the Kilamuwa Stela). * loss of *ʔ in the word ''ḥd'' (< *ʔḥd) 'one'. This occurs sporadically also in biblical Hebrew and in the Phoenician dialect of

Byblos Byblos ( ; gr, Βύβλος), also known as Jbeil or Jubayl ( ar, جُبَيْل, Jubayl, locally ; phn, 𐤂𐤁𐤋, , probably ), is a city in the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate of Lebanon. It is believed to have been first occupied between 880 ...

. * a change *ɬʼ > ''q'', e.g. ''ʔrq'' 'earth', known as an orthographic device also in

Old Aramaic Old Aramaic refers to the earliest stage of the Aramaic language, known from the Aramaic inscriptions discovered since the 19th century. Emerging as the language of the city-states of the Arameans in the Levant in the Early Iron Age, Old Aramai ...

(in later Aramaic, Proto-Semitic *ɬʼ shifts instead to ). * appearance of ''n'' for final ''m''. Pat-El & Wilson-Wright propose as additional general characteristics of Samalian the development of nasal vowels, as expected word-final ''n'' after long vowels is systematically absent in the Panamuwa inscriptions; as well as an object marker ''wt'', cognate with Aramean ''ləwāt'' 'with'.

Notes

References

* * * Northwest Semitic languages Languages attested from the 1st millennium BC Extinct languages of Asia {{semitic-lang-stub