The Samaritan script is used by the Samaritans for religious writings, including the

Samaritan Pentateuch The Samaritan Torah ( Samaritan Hebrew: , ''Tōrāʾ''), also called the Samaritan Pentateuch, is a text of the Torah written in the Samaritan script and used as sacred scripture by the Samaritans. It dates back to one of the ancient versi ...

, writings in

Samaritan Hebrew Samaritan Hebrew () is a reading tradition used liturgically by the Samaritans for reading the Ancient Hebrew language of the Samaritan Pentateuch, in contrast to Tiberian Hebrew among the Jews. For the Samaritans, Ancient Hebrew ceased to be ...

, and for commentaries and translations in

Samaritan Aramaic Samaritan Aramaic, or Samaritan, was the dialect of Aramaic used by the Samaritans in their sacred and scholarly literature. This should not be confused with the Samaritan Hebrew language of the Scriptures. Samaritan Aramaic ceased to be ...

and occasionally

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 ...

. Samaritan is a direct descendant of the

Paleo-Hebrew alphabet The Paleo-Hebrew script ( he, הכתב העברי הקדום), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite inscriptions from the region of biblical Israel and Judah. It is considered to be the script ...

, which was a variety of the

Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician al ...

. Paleo-Hebrew is the alphabet in which large parts of the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Proto-Sinaitic script Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, the North Semitic alphabet, or Early Alphabetic) is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian ...

. Paleo-Hebrew script was used by the ancient

Israelites The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...

, both

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

and Samaritans. The better-known "square script"

Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewi ...

which has been traditionally used by Jews since the Babylonian exile is a stylized version of the

Aramaic alphabet The ancient Aramaic alphabet was adapted by Arameans from the Phoenician alphabet and became a distinct script by the 8th century BC. It was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Fert ...

called Ashurit (כתב אשורי), though religious literalist interpretations of assume that the text asserts that it was received on Sinai from the Finger of God and that it has been in continuous and unchanged use since then. Historically, the Aramaic alphabet became distinct from Phoenician/Paleo-Hebrew in the 8th century. After the fall of the Persian Empire, Judaism used both scripts before settling on the Aramaic form, henceforth de facto becoming the “Hebrew alphabet” since it was repurposed to write Hebrew. For a limited time thereafter, the use of paleo-Hebrew (proto-Samaritan) among Jews was retained only to write the

Tetragrammaton The Tetragrammaton (; ), or Tetragram, is the four-letter Hebrew theonym (transliterated as YHWH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left (in Hebrew), are ''yodh'', '' he'', '' waw'', and ...

, but soon that custom was also abandoned. A

cursive Cursive (also known as script, among other names) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionali ...

style of the alphabet also exists. The Samaritan alphabet first became known to the Western world with the publication of a manuscript of the

in 1631 by Jean Morin.Exercitationes ecclesiasticae in utrumque Samaritanorum Pentateuchum
1631 In 1616 the traveler

Pietro della Valle Pietro Della Valle ( la, Petrus a Valle; 2 April 1586 – 21 April 1652), also written Pietro della Valle, was an Italian composer, musicologist, and author who travelled throughout Asia during the Renaissance period. His travels took him to the ...

had purchased a copy of the text in

Damascus )), is an adjective which means "spacious". , motto = , image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg , image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg , seal_type = Seal , map_caption = , ...

, and this manuscript, now known as Codex B, was deposited in a

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

ian library.

Development

The table below shows the development of the Samaritan script. On the left are the corresponding Hebrew letters for comparison. Column I is the

. Column X shows the modern form of the letters. Samaritan script table

Letters

Consonants : ā'lāf : bīt : gā'mān : dā'lāt : īy : bā̊ : zēn : īt : ṭīt : yūt : kā̊f : lā'bāt : mīm : nūn : sin'gā̊t : īn : fī : ṣā̊'dīy : qūf : rīš : šān : tā̊f Vowels : : ā'lāf : ''occlusion'' :

dagesh The dagesh () is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It was added to the Hebrew orthography at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points). It takes the form of a dot placed inside a Hebrew letter and has the effect of modi ...

: epenthetic yūt : epenthetic yût : ē : e/ə : ā̊ː : ā̊ : å : āː : ā : a : ă : ă : ū : u : î : ī : i : ō :

sukun The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include: consonant pointing known as (), and supplementary diacritics known as (). The latter include the vowel marks termed (; singular: , '). The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where sh ...

Punctuation : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :

Unicode

Samaritan script was added to the

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

Standard in October 2009 with the release of version 5.2. The Unicode block for Samaritan is U+0800–U+083F:

References

Bibliography

External links