Aramaic alphabet

Aramaic alphabet
Type
Languages Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Mandaic
Time period
 800 BC to 600 AD
Parent systems
Child systems

Hebrew
Palmyrene
Mandaic
Pahlavi
Brāhmī
Kharoṣṭhī
Syriac
 →Sogdian
   →Orkhon (Turkic)
     →Old Hungarian
   →Old Uyghur
     →Mongolian
 →Nabataean alphabet
   →Arabic alphabet

     →N'Ko alphabet
Direction Right-to-left
ISO 15924 Armi, 124Imperial Aramaic
Unicode alias
 Imperial Aramaic
U+10840–U+1085F

The ancient Aramaic alphabet is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet and became distinctive from it by the 8th century BCE. It was used to write the Aramaic language, and had displaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet for the writing of Hebrew. The letters all represent consonants, some of which are also used as matres lectionis to indicate long vowels.

The Aramaic alphabet is historically significant, since virtually all modern Middle Eastern writing systems can be traced back to it, as well as numerous non-Chinese writing systems of Central and East Asia. This is primarily due to the widespread usage of the Aramaic language as both a lingua franca and the official language of the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires, and their successor, the Achaemenid Empire. Among the scripts in modern use, the Hebrew alphabet 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.

Writing systems (like the Aramaic one) that indicate consonants but do not indicate most vowels other than by means of matres lectionis or added diacritical signs, have been called abjads by Peter T. Daniels to distinguish them from true alphabets, such as Greek, 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 or an alphabet, which would imply that a system like Aramaic must be either a syllabary (as argued by Ignace Gelb) or an incomplete or deficient alphabet (as most other writers have said); rather, it is a different type.

History

Origins

Bilingual Greek and Aramaic inscription by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka the Great at Kandahar, Afghanistan, 3rd century BC

The earliest inscriptions in the Aramaic language use the Phoenician alphabet.[1] Over time, the alphabet developed into the form shown below. Aramaic gradually became the lingua franca throughout the Middle East, with the script at first complementing and then displacing Assyrian cuneiform as the predominant writing system.

Achaemenid period

Around 500 BC, following the Persian Achaemenid conquest of Mesopotamia under Darius I, Old Aramaic was adopted by the Iranians 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."[2]

Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised; its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect and was inevitably influenced by Old Persian. The Aramaic glyph forms of this period are often divided into two main styles, the "lapidary" form, usually inscribed on hard surfaces like stone monuments, and a cursive form, of which the lapidary form tended to be more conservative (remaining more visually similar to Phoenician and early Aramaic). Both were in use through the Achaemenid Persian period, though the cursive form steadily gained ground over the lapidary, which had largely disappeared by the 3rd century BC.[3]

Stele with dedicatory lapidary Aramaic inscription to the god Salm. Sandstone, 5th century BC. Found in Tayma by Charles Huber in 1884. Now in the Louvre.

For centuries after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire in 331 BC, Imperial Aramaic—or near enough for it to be recognisable—would remain an influence on the various native Iranian languages. The Aramaic script would survive as the essential characteristics of the Iranian Pahlavi writing system.[4]

A group of thirty Aramaic documents from Bactria has been recently discovered. An analysis 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 Bactria and Sogdiana.[5]

The widespread usage of Achaemenid Aramaic in the Middle East led to the gradual adoption of the Aramaic alphabet for writing the Hebrew language. Formerly, Hebrew had been written using an alphabet closer in form to that of Phoenician (the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet).

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 those derived from the Phoenician one directly and those 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 BCE, while those of the East (the Levant, Persia, Central Asia and India) are considered Aramaic-derived, adapted from around the 6th century BCE 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, were little changed in style from the Imperial Aramaic alphabet.

A Cursive Hebrew variant developed from the early centuries AD, but it remained restricted to the status of a variant used alongside the non-cursive. By contrast, the cursive developed out of the Nabataean alphabet in the same period soon became the standard for writing Arabic, evolving into the Arabic alphabet as it stood by the time of the early spread of Islam.

The development of cursive versions of Aramaic also led to the creation of the Syriac, Palmyrene and Mandaic alphabets. These scripts formed the basis of the historical scripts of Central Asia, such as the Sogdian and Mongolian alphabets.[6]

The Old Turkic script is generally considered to have its ultimate origins in Aramaic,[7][8][6] in particular via the Pahlavi or Sogdian alphabets,[9][10] as suggested by V. Thomsen, or possibly via Karosthi (cf., Issyk inscription).

Aramaic is also considered to be the most likely source of the Brahmi script, ancestor of the Brahmic family of scripts, which includes Devanagari.

Aramaic alphabet

Today, Biblical Aramaic, Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects and the Aramaic language of the Talmud are written in the Hebrew alphabet. Syriac and Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects are written in the Syriac alphabet. Mandaic is written in the Mandaic alphabet. Due to the near-identity of the Aramaic and the classical Hebrew alphabets, Aramaic text is mostly typeset in standard Hebrew script in scholarly literature.

Ma'lula

In Malula, one of few surviving communities where a Western Aramaic dialect is still spoken, the Arameans started a programme to give their language a written abjad for the Aramaic alphabet. The program ran into trouble recently, though, as a Syrian newspaper suggested that the alphabet being used to teach written Aramaic bore an uncanny resemblance to the Hebrew characters found in modern-day Israel. Worried that a flagship heritage scheme might in any way be associated with the country’s neighboring enemy, the government-run University of Damascus which established the institute acted quickly to freeze the Aramaic programme. They started to use the Syriac alphabet (serto), instead.[11]

Letter name Aramaic written using Letter Equivalent letter in IPA
Syriac script Imperial Aramaic script Hebrew Arabic Brahmi Nabataean Kharosthi
Ālap 𐡀 א ا /ʔ/; /aː/, /eː/
Bēth 𐡁 ב ب /b/, /v/
Gāmal 𐡂 ג ج /ɡ/, /ɣ/
Dālath 𐡃 ד د،ذ /ð/, /d/
Hē 𐡄 ה ه ? ? /h/
Waw 𐡅 ו و /w/; /oː/, /uː/
Zain 𐡆 ז ز ? ? /z/
Ḥēth 𐡇 ח ح،خ ? ? /ħ/ /χ~x/
Ṭēth 𐡈 ט ط،ظ emphatic /tˤ/
Yodh 𐡉 י ي /j/; /iː/, /eː/
Kāp 𐡊 כ ך ك /k/, /x/
Lāmadh 𐡋 ל ل /l/
Mem 𐡌 מ ם م /m/
Nun 𐡍 נ ן ن /n/
Semkath 𐡎 ס س /s/
ʿĒ 𐡏 ע ع، غ ? ? /ʕ/
Pē 𐡐 פ ף ف /p/, /f/
Ṣādhē , 𐡑 צ ץ ص، ض emphatic /sˤ/
Qop 𐡒 ק ق /q/
Rēsh 𐡓 ר ر /r/
Shin 𐡔 ש ش /ʃ/
Taw 𐡕 ת ت، ث /t/, /θ/

Matres lectionis

Main article: Mater lectionis

In Aramaic writing, the letters Waw and Yudh serve a double function: Originally, they only represented the consonants w and y, but at a later stage they were also adopted to indicate the long vowels ū and ī respectively (often also ō and ē respectively). In this latter role, written after the consonant that is followed the vowel in question, they are known as matres lectionis or "mothers of reading". The letter Alaph, likewise, has some of the characteristics of a mater lectionis: in initial positions, it indicates a specific consonant called glottal stop (followed by a vowel), and, in the middle of the word and word finally, it often also stands for the long vowels ā or ē. Among Jews, influence of Hebrew spelling often led to the use of He instead of Alaph in word final positions. The practice of using certain letters to hold vowel values spread to Aramaic-derived writing systems, such as Arabic and Hebrew, where they are still used today.

Unicode

The Syriac Aramaic alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in September 1999 with the release of version 3.0.

The Syriac Abbreviation (a type of overline) can be represented with a special control character called the Syriac Abbreviation Mark (U+070F). The Unicode block for Syriac Aramaic is U+0700–U+074F:

Syriac[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+070x ܀ ܁ ܂ ܃ ܄ ܅ ܆ ܇ ܈ ܉ ܊ ܋ ܌ ܍ ܏
 SAM 
U+071x ܐ ܑ ܒ ܓ ܔ ܕ ܖ ܗ ܘ ܙ ܚ ܛ ܜ ܝ ܞ ܟ
U+072x ܠ ܡ ܢ ܣ ܤ ܥ ܦ ܧ ܨ ܩ ܪ ܫ ܬ ܭ ܮ ܯ
U+073x ܰ ܱ ܲ ܳ ܴ ܵ ܶ ܷ ܸ ܹ ܺ ܻ ܼ ܽ ܾ ܿ
U+074x ݀ ݁ ݂ ݃ ݄ ݅ ݆ ݇ ݈ ݉ ݊ ݍ ݎ ݏ
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 8.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

The Imperial Aramaic alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in October 2009 with the release of version 5.2.

The Unicode block for Imperial Aramaic is U+10840–U+1085F:

Imperial Aramaic[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+1084x 𐡀 𐡁 𐡂 𐡃 𐡄 𐡅 𐡆 𐡇 𐡈 𐡉 𐡊 𐡋 𐡌 𐡍 𐡎 𐡏
U+1085x 𐡐 𐡑 𐡒 𐡓 𐡔 𐡕 𐡗 𐡘 𐡙 𐡚 𐡛 𐡜 𐡝 𐡞 𐡟
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 8.0
2.^ Grey area indicates non-assigned code point

References

  1. ↑ Inland Syria and the East-of-Jordan Region in the First Millenium BCE before the Assyrian Intrusions, Mark W. Chavalas, The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium, ed. Lowell K. Handy, (Brill, 1997), 169.
  2. ↑ Shaked, Saul (1987). "Aramaic". Encyclopædia Iranica 2. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 250–261. p. 251
  3. ↑ Greenfield, J.C. (1985). "Aramaic in the Achaemenid Empire". In Gershevitch, I. The Cambridge History of Iran: Volume 2. Cambridge University Press. pp. 709–710.
  4. ↑ Geiger, Wilhelm; Kuhn, Ernst (2002). "Grundriss der iranischen Philologie: Band I. Abteilung 1". Boston: Adamant: 249ff.
  5. ↑ Naveh, Joseph; Shaked, Shaul (2006). Ancient Aramaic Documents from Bactria. Studies in the Khalili Collection. Oxford: Khalili Collections. ISBN 1-874780-74-9.
  6. 1 2 Kara, György (1996). "Aramaic Scripts for Altaic Languages". In Daniels, Peter T.; Bright, William. The World's Writing Systems. Oxford University Press. pp. 535–558. ISBN 0-19-507993-0.
  7. ↑ Babylonian beginnings: The origin of the cuneiform writing system in comparative perspective, Jerold S. Cooper, The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process, ed. Stephen D. Houston, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 58-59.
  8. ↑ Tristan James Mabry, Nationalism, Language, and Muslim Exceptionalism, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 109.
  9. ↑ Turks, A. Samoylovitch, First Encyclopaedia of Islam: 1913-1936, Vol. VI, (Brill, 1993), 911.
  10. ↑ George L. Campbell and Christopher Moseley, The Routledge Handbook of Scripts and Alphabets, (Routledge, 2012), 40.
  11. ↑ http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0402/Easter-Sunday-A-Syrian-bid-to-resurrect-Aramaic-the-language-of-Jesus-Christ

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