The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the

Aramaic language Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient Syria (region), region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai Peninsula, Sinai, Southeastern Anatolia Regi ...

s spoken by ancient

Aramean The Arameans, or Aramaeans (; ; , ), were a tribal Semitic people in the ancient Near East, first documented in historical sources from the late 12th century BCE. Their homeland, often referred to as the land of Aram, originally covered ce ...

pre-Christian peoples throughout the

Fertile Crescent The Fertile Crescent () is a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, together with northern Kuwait, south-eastern Turkey, and western Iran. Some authors also include ...

. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects underwent linguistic Aramaization during a

language shift Language shift, also known as language transfer, language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are perceived ...

for governing purposes — a precursor to

Arabization Arabization or Arabicization () is a sociology, sociological process of cultural change in which a non-Arab society becomes Arabs, Arab, meaning it either directly adopts or becomes strongly influenced by the Arabic, Arabic language, Arab cultu ...

centuries later — including among the

Assyrians Assyrians (, ) are an ethnic group indigenous to Mesopotamia, a geographical region in West Asia. Modern Assyrians share descent directly from the ancient Assyrians, one of the key civilizations of Mesopotamia. While they are distinct from ot ...

and

Babylonians Babylonia (; , ) was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Kuwait, Syria and Iran). It emerged as an Akkadian-populated but Amorite-ru ...

who permanently replaced their Akkadian language and its

cuneiform script Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

with Aramaic and its script, and among

Jews Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

, but not

Samaritans Samaritans (; ; ; ), are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Hebrews and Israelites of the ancient Near East. They are indigenous to Samaria, a historical region of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah that ...

, who adopted the Aramaic language as their vernacular and started using the Aramaic alphabet, which they call " Square Script", even for writing

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

, displacing the former

Paleo-Hebrew alphabet The Paleo-Hebrew script (), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, including pre-Biblical and Biblical Hebrew, from southern Canaan, also known as the biblical kingdoms ...

. The modern

Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably ...

derives from the Aramaic alphabet, in contrast to the modern

Samaritan alphabet The Samaritan Hebrew script, or simply Samaritan script, is used by the Samaritans for religious writings, including the Samaritan Pentateuch, writings in Samaritan Hebrew, and for commentaries and translations in Samaritan Aramaic and occasion ...

, which derives from Paleo-Hebrew. The letters in the Aramaic alphabet all represent

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

s, some of which are also used as ''

matres lectionis A ''mater lectionis'' ( , ; , ''matres lectionis'' ; original ) is any consonant letter that is used to indicate a vowel, primarily in the writing of Semitic languages such as Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac. The letters that do this in Hebrew are ...

'' to indicate long

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s. Writing systems, like the Aramaic, that indicate consonants but do not indicate most vowels other than by means of ''matres lectionis'' or added diacritical signs, have been called

abjad An abjad ( or abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introd ...

s by

Peter T. Daniels Peter T. Daniels (born December 11, 1951) is a scholar of writing systems, specializing in typology. He was co-editor (with William Bright) of the book '' The World's Writing Systems'' (1996). He was a lecturer at University of Wisconsin–Mi ...

to distinguish them from alphabets such as the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

, that represent vowels more systematically. The term was coined to avoid the notion that a writing system that represents sounds must be either a

syllabary In the Linguistics, linguistic study of Written language, written languages, a syllabary is a set of grapheme, written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) mora (linguistics), morae which make up words. A symbol in a syllaba ...

or an alphabet, which would imply that a system like Aramaic must be either a syllabary, as argued by

Ignace Gelb Ignace Jay Gelb (October 14, 1907December 22, 1985) was a Polish-American Assyriologist who pioneered the scientific study of writing systems. Early life Born in Tarnów, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Poland), he earned his PhD from the Universi ...

, or an incomplete or deficient alphabet, as most other writers had said before Daniels. Daniels put forward, this is a different type of writing system, intermediate between syllabaries and 'full' alphabets. The Aramaic

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

is historically significant since virtually all modern

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

ern writing systems can be traced back to it. That is primarily due to the widespread usage of the Aramaic language after it was adopted as both a ''

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

'' and the official language of the

Neo-Assyrian The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew to dominate the ancient Near East and parts of South Caucasus, Nort ...

and

Neo-Babylonian The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to ancient Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC ...

Empires, and their successor, the

Achaemenid Empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian peoples, Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, i ...

. Among the descendant scripts in modern use, the Jewish

bears the closest relation to the Imperial Aramaic script of the 5th century BC, with an identical letter inventory and, for the most part, nearly identical letter shapes. By contrast the Samaritan Hebrew script is directly descended from Proto-Hebrew/Phoenician script, which was the ancestor of the Aramaic alphabet. The Aramaic alphabet was also an ancestor to the

Syriac alphabet The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century. It is one of the Semitic languages, Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares sim ...

and

Mongolian script The traditional Mongolian script, also known as the Hudum Mongol bichig, was the first Mongolian alphabet, writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most widespread until the introduction of Cyrillic script, Cy ...

and

Kharosthi Kharosthi script (), also known as the Gandhari script (), was an ancient script originally developed in the Gandhara Region of modern-day Pakistan, between the 5th and 3rd century BCE. used primarily by the people of Gandhara alongside vari ...

and

Brahmi Brahmi ( ; ; ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system from ancient India. "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' or ...

, and Nabataean alphabet, which had the

Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet, or the Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is a unicase, unicameral script written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters, of which most ...

as a descendant.

History

The earliest inscriptions in the

use the

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, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions fo ...

. Over time, the alphabet developed into the Aramaic alphabet by the 8th century BC. It was used to write the

s spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the

. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects underwent linguistic Aramaization during a

for governing purposes — a precursor to

centuries later. These include the

and

, who permanently replaced their Akkadian language and its

with Aramaic and its script, and among

, but not

, who adopted the Aramaic language as their vernacular and started using the Aramaic alphabet even for writing

, displacing the former

. The modern

derives from the Aramaic alphabet, in contrast to the modern

, which derives from

Paleo-Hebrew The Paleo-Hebrew script (), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, including pre-Biblical and Biblical Hebrew, from southern Canaan, also known as the biblical kingdoms o ...

Achaemenid Empire (The First Persian Empire)

Around 500 BC, following the

Achaemenid The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the large ...

conquest of

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

under

Darius I Darius I ( ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak, when it included much of West A ...

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 Fertile Crescent in the Early Iron Age, ...

was adopted by the Persians as the "vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast Persian empire with its different peoples and languages. The use of a single official language, which modern scholarship has dubbed as Official Aramaic, Imperial Aramaic or Achaemenid Aramaic, can be assumed to have greatly contributed to the astonishing success of the Achaemenid Persians in holding their far-flung empire together for as long as they did." Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised. Its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect and was influenced by

Old Persian Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as (I ...

. The Aramaic glyph forms of the period are often divided into two main styles, the "lapidary" form, usually inscribed on hard surfaces like stone monuments, and a cursive form whose lapidary form tended to be more conservative by remaining more visually similar to Phoenician and early Aramaic. Both were in use through the Achaemenid Persian period, but the cursive form steadily gained ground over the lapidary, which had largely disappeared by the 3rd century BC. For centuries after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire in 331 BC, Imperial Aramaic, or something near enough to it to be recognisable, remained an influence on the various native

Iranian languages The Iranian languages, also called the Iranic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau. The Iranian langu ...

. The Aramaic script survived as the essential characteristics of the Iranian Pahlavi writing system. 30 Aramaic documents from

Bactria Bactria (; Bactrian language, Bactrian: , ), or Bactriana, was an ancient Iranian peoples, Iranian civilization in Central Asia based in the area south of the Oxus River (modern Amu Darya) and north of the mountains of the Hindu Kush, an area ...

have been recently discovered, an analysis of which was published in November 2006. The texts, which were rendered on leather, reflect the use of Aramaic in the 4th century BC, in the Persian Achaemenid administration of

and

Sogdiana Sogdia () or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian civilization between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, and in present-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Sogdiana was also a province of the Achaemenid Empire, and l ...

. The widespread usage of Achaemenid Aramaic in the Middle East led to the gradual adoption of the Aramaic alphabet for writing

. Formerly, Hebrew had been written using an alphabet closer in form to that of Phoenician, the

Aramaic-derived scripts

Since the evolution of the Aramaic alphabet out of the Phoenician one was a gradual process, the division of the world's alphabets into the ones derived from the Phoenician one directly, and the ones derived from Phoenician via Aramaic, is somewhat artificial. In general, the alphabets of the Mediterranean region (Anatolia, Greece, Italy) are classified as Phoenician-derived, adapted from around the 8th century BC. Those of the East (the Levant, Persia, Central Asia, and India) are considered Aramaic-derived, adapted from around the 6th century BC from the Imperial Aramaic script of the Achaemenid Empire. After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the unity of the Imperial Aramaic script was lost, diversifying into a number of descendant cursives. The Hebrew and Nabataean alphabets, as they stood by the

Roman era In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

, were little changed in style from the Imperial Aramaic alphabet.

Ibn Khaldun Ibn Khaldun (27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732–808 Hijri year, AH) was an Arabs, Arab Islamic scholar, historian, philosopher and sociologist. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest social scientists of the Middle Ages, and cons ...

(1332–1406) alleges that not only the old Nabataean writing was influenced by the "Syrian script" (i.e. Aramaic), but also the old Chaldean script. A

cursive Hebrew Cursive Hebrew ( , "flowing Hebrew writing", or , "Hebrew handwriting", often called simply ', "writing") is a collective designation for several styles of handwriting the Hebrew alphabet. Modern Hebrew, especially in informal use in Israel, is h ...

variant developed from the early centuries AD. It remained restricted to the status of a variant used alongside the noncursive. By contrast, the cursive developed out of the Nabataean alphabet in the same period soon became the standard for writing Arabic, evolving into the

as it stood by the time of the early

spread of Islam The spread of Islam spans almost 1,400 years. The early Muslim conquests that occurred following the death of Muhammad in 632 CE led to the creation of the caliphates, expanding over a vast geographical area; conversion to Islam was boosted ...

. The development of cursive versions of Aramaic led to the creation of the Syriac, Palmyrene and

Mandaic alphabet The Mandaic alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Mandaic language. It is thought to have evolved between the second and seventh century CE from either a cursive form of Aramaic (as did Syriac) or from Inscriptional Parthia ...

s, which formed the basis of the historical scripts of Central Asia, such as the Sogdian and Mongolian alphabets. The

Old Turkic script The Old Turkic script (also known variously as Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script, Turkic runes) was the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkic peoples, Turkic khanates from the 8th to 10th centuries to recor ...

is generally considered to have its ultimate origins in Aramaic, in particular via the Pahlavi or

Sogdian alphabet The Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, a language in the Iranian family used by the people of Sogdia. The alphabet is derived from Syriac, a descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet. The Sogdian alphabet is one of th ...

s, as suggested by V. Thomsen, or possibly via

(''cf''., Issyk inscription).

Brahmi script Brahmi ( ; ; ISO 15919, ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system from ancient India. "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 ...

was also possibly derived or inspired by Aramaic.

Brahmic family of scripts The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...

includes

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

Languages using the alphabet

Today,

Biblical Aramaic Biblical Aramaic is the form of Aramaic that is used in the books of Daniel and Ezra in the Hebrew Bible. It should not be confused with the Targums — Aramaic paraphrases, explanations and expansions of the Hebrew scriptures. History During ...

, Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects and the Aramaic language of the

Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...

are written in the modern-Hebrew alphabet, distinguished from the Old Hebrew script. In classical

Jewish literature Jewish literature includes works written by Jews on Jewish themes, literary works written in Jewish languages on various themes, and literary works in any language written by Jewish writers. Ancient Jewish literature includes Biblical literature ...

, the name given to the modern-Hebrew script was "Ashurit", the ancient Assyrian script, a script now known widely as the Aramaic script. It is believed that, during the period of Assyrian dominion, Aramaic script and language received official status. Syriac and Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects are today written in the

, which script has superseded the more ancient Assyrian script and now bears its name.

Mandaic Mandaic may refer to: * Mandaic language * Mandaic alphabet The Mandaic alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Mandaic language. It is thought to have evolved between the second and seventh century CE from either a cursive fo ...

is written in the

. The near-identical nature of the Aramaic and the classical Hebrew alphabets caused Aramaic text to be typeset mostly in the standard Hebrew script in scholarly literature.

Maaloula

In Maaloula, one of few surviving communities in which a Western Aramaic dialect is still spoken, an Aramaic Language Institute was established in 2006 by

Damascus University Damascus University () is the largest and oldest university in Syria, located in the capital Damascus, with campuses in other Syrian cities. It was founded in 1923 as the Syrian University () through the merger of the Faculty of Medicine of Dama ...

that teaches courses to keep the language alive. Unlike Classical Syriac, which has a rich literary tradition in Syriac-Aramaic script, Western Neo-Aramaic was solely passed down orally for generations until 2006 and was not utilized in a written form. Therefore, the Language Institute's chairman, George Rizkalla (Rezkallah), undertook the writing of a textbook in Western Neo-Aramaic. Being previously unwritten, Rizkalla opted for the

. In 2010, the institute's activities were halted due to concerns that the square Maalouli-Aramaic alphabet used in the program bore a resemblance to the square script of the Hebrew alphabet. As a result, all signs featuring the square Maalouli script were subsequently removed. The program stated that they would instead use the more distinct Syriac-Aramaic alphabet, although use of the Maalouli alphabet has continued to some degree. Al Jazeera Arabic also broadcast a program about Western Neo-Aramaic and the villages in which it is spoken with the square script still in use.

Letters

Unicode

The Imperial Aramaic alphabet was added to the

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

Standard in October 2009, with the release of version 5.2. The Unicode block for Imperial Aramaic is U+10840–U+1085F: The Syriac Aramaic alphabet was added to the

Standard in September 1999, with the release of version 3.0. The Syriac Abbreviation (a type of

overline An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal and vertical, horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In old mathematical notation, an overline was called a ''vinculum (symbol), vinculum'', a notation fo ...

) can be represented with a special control character called the

Syriac Abbreviation Mark The Syriac Abbreviation Mark is a Unicode Control character (U+070F) that forms part of the Syriac script block. In Syriac, words are sometimes written in an abbreviated form, omitting some of the last letters. In such cases, a special overline is ...

(U+070F). The Unicode block for Syriac Aramaic is U+0700–U+074F:

References

Sources

* Byrne, Ryan. "Middle Aramaic Scripts". ''Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics''. Elsevier. (2006) * Daniels, Peter T., et al. eds. ''The World's Writing Systems''. Oxford. (1996) * Coulmas, Florian. ''The Writing Systems of the World''. Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford. (1989) * Rudder, Joshua. ''Learn to Write Aramaic: A Step-by-Step Approach to the Historical & Modern Scripts''. n.p.: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011. 220 pp. . Includes a wide variety of Aramaic scripts. * Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic on Coins, reading and transliterating Proto-Hebrew
online edition
(Judaea Coin Archive).

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aramaic Alphabet 8th-century BC establishments Obsolete writing systems Persian scripts Right-to-left writing systems Abjad writing systems