Aramaic alphabet
Alfabeto arameo
- Date
- c. 850 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Tell Fekheriye, Al-Hasakah, Syria
- Credited to
- Arameans of the Levant and Upper Mesopotamia
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
An adaptation of the 22-consonant Phoenician alphabet to the Aramaic language, which became the lingua franca and administrative script of the Achaemenid Empire. Square Hebrew, Syriac, Nabataean and, through it, Arabic descend from it.
The oldest Aramaic inscriptions (Tell Fekheriye, the Tel Dan stele) date from the 10th-9th centuries BC; the shift from Phoenician to Aramaic writing is gradual.
What it led to
- the common script of Persian administration from Egypt to India
- square Hebrew, Syriac, Nabataean and Arabic
- Central Asian scripts such as Sogdian and Mongolian