Imperial Aramaic
Imperial Aramaic | |
---|---|
Official/Standard Aramaic | |
𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀 Ārāmāyā | |
Middle Aramaic (c. 200–1200), or Old Syriac then Classical Syriac | |
| |
Early form | |
Aramaic alphabet | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-2 | arc |
ISO 639-3 | arc |
Glottolog | impe1235 |
Imperial Aramaic (
Some scholars use the term as a designation for a distinctive, socially prominent phase in the history of Aramaic language, that lasted from the middle of the 8th century BCE to the end of the 4th century BCE and was marked by the use of Aramaic as a language of public life and administration in the late Neo-Assyrian Empire and its successor states, the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Achaemenid Empire, also adding to that some later (Post-Imperial) uses that persisted throughout the early Hellenistic period. Other scholars use the term Imperial Aramaic in a narrower sense, reduced only to the Achaemenid period, basing that reduction on several strictly linguistic distinctions between the previous (Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian) phase and later (more prominent) Achaemenid phase.
Since all of those phases can be
The Elephantine papyri and ostraca, as well as other Egyptian texts, are the largest group of extant records in the language, collected in the standard Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt.[1] Outside of Egypt, most texts are known from stone or pottery inscriptions spread across a wide geographic area.[1] More recently a group of leather and wooden documents were found in Bactria, known as the Bactria Aramaic documents.[1]
Name and classification
The term "Imperial Aramaic" was first coined by Josef Markwart in 1927, calling the language by the German name Reichsaramäisch.[8][9][10] In 1955, Richard N. Frye noted that no extant edict expressly or ambiguously accorded the status of "official language" to any particular language, causing him to question the classification of Imperial Aramaic. Frye went on to reclassify Imperial Aramaic as the lingua franca used in the territories of the Achaemenid Empire, further suggesting that the language’s use was more prevalent in these areas than initially thought.[11]
History
The native speakers of Aramaic, the Arameans, settled in great numbers in Babylonia and Upper Mesopotamia during the ages of the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires. The massive influx of settlers led to the adoption of Aramaic as the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.[12] After the Achaemenid conquest of Mesopotamia in 539 BC, the Achaemenids continued the use of Aramaic as the language of the region, further extending its prevalence by making it the imperial standard (thus "Imperial" Aramaic) so it may be the "vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast empire with its different peoples and languages." The adoption of a single official language for the various regions of the empire has been cited as a reason for the at the time unprecedented success of the Achaemenids in maintaining the expanse of their empire for a period of centuries.[13]
Sources
One of the most extensive collections of texts written in Imperial Aramaic is the
Legacy and influence
The evolution of alphabets from the Mediterranean region is commonly split into two major divisions: the
The orthography of Imperial Aramaic was based more on its own historical roots than on any spoken dialect, leading to a high standardization of the language across the expanse of the Achaemenid Empire. Of the Imperial Aramaic glyphs extant from its era, there are two main styles: the lapidary form, often inscribed on hard surfaces like stone monuments, and the cursive form. The Achaemenid Empire used both of these styles, but the cursive became much more prominent than the lapidary, causing the latter to eventually disappear by the 3rd century BC.
Hebrew
The
Late Old Western Aramaic, also known as Jewish Old Palestinian, is a well-attested language used by the communities of
The New Testament has several non-Greek terms of Aramaic origin,[23] such as:
- Talitha (ταλιθα) that can represent the noun ṭalyĕṯā (Mark 5:41).
- Rabbounei (Ραββουνει), which stands for "my master/great one/teacher" in both Hebrew and Aramaic (John 20:16).
Nabataean Aramaic
Instead of using their native
Manichaean
The Manichaean
Unicode
Imperial Aramaic | |
---|---|
Range | U+10840..U+1085F (32 code points) |
Plane | SMP |
Scripts | Imperial Aramaic |
Major alphabets | Aramaic |
Assigned | 31 code points |
Unused | 1 reserved code points |
Unicode version history | |
5.2 (2009) | 31 (+31) |
Unicode documentation | |
Code chart ∣ Web page | |
Note: [26][27] |
Imperial Aramaic is a
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 |
References
- ^ ISBN 978-1-108-78788-8.
Imperial Aramaic (IA) [Footnote: Other names: Official Aramaic, Reichsaramäisch. Because many of the surviving texts come from Egypt, some scholars speak of "Egyptian Aramaic."]… As noted, the documentation of IA is significantly greater than that of Old Aramaic; the hot and dry climate of Egypt has been particularly favorable to the preservation of antiquities, including Aramaic texts written on soft media such as papyrus or leather. The primary, although not exclusive, source of our knowledge of Persian-period Aramaic is a large number of papyri discovered on the island of Elephantine… All of the Egyptian Aramaic texts have been collected and reedited in the Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt… This is now the standard text edition… Outside of Egypt, Aramaic texts written primarily on hard media such as stone or pottery have been discovered, including texts from Palestine, Arabia, Asia Minor, Iraq (Babylon), and Iran (Persepolis). A recent discovery, of uncertain provenance, is a relatively large collection of documents, now in a private collection, consisting mainly of the correspondence of the official Akhvamazda of Bactria dating from 354 to 324 BCE (Nave & Shaked 2012). They are similar in some ways to the Arshama archive published by Driver; the find-spot was no doubt Afghanistan.
- ^ Beyer 1986, p. 10-11.
- ^ Fitzmyer 1997, p. 59.
- ^ Folmer 1995, p. 8-13.
- ^ Gzella 2012a, p. 574.
- ^ Folmer 2012, p. 587-588.
- ^ Gzella 2015, p. 54, 105, 155, 158.
- ^ Folmer 1995, p. 10.
- ^ Gzella 2015, p. 158.
- ^ Josef Markwart, “Np. āđīna ‘Freitag’,” Ungarische Jahrbücher 7, 1927, pp. 91: "In der Bedeutung 'bestimmte (kommende, zukünftige) Zeit’ ist das Wort zaman schon ins Reichsaramäische und von da ins aramaisierende Hebräisch und ins Nabatäische und aus diesem später ins Arabische übergegangen. [Footnote: So nenne ich die aramäische Kanzleisprache der Achaimeniden, in welcher die Mehrzahl, wenn nicht alle, aramäischen Inschriften und sämtliche Papyri der Achaimenidenzeit, sowie die aramäischen Stücke in den Büchern 'Ezra und Daniel abgefaßt sind. Daß Kautzsch und noch der Schweizer Karl Marti (Kurzgefaßte Grammatik der biblisch-aramäischen Sprache. Berlin 1896 S. 4) diese Sprache W est aramäisch nennen konnten, war ein grober Salto mortale, der nur dadurch verständlich wird, daß die Verfasser vom aramäischen Sprachgute des uzvärisn, d. h. von den aramäischen Ideogrammen des Mitteliranischen keine Kunde hatten.]"
- JSTOR 2718444. p. 457.
- ISBN 978-1-57506-083-5.
- ^ Shaked, Saul (1987). "Aramaic". Encyclopædia Iranica. Vol. 2. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 251–252. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
- ^ Collins 1993, p. 710-712.
- ISBN 978-1874780748.
- ^ Geiger, Wilhelm; Kuhn, Ernst (2002). "Grundriss der iranischen Philologie: Band I. Abteilung 1". Boston: Adamant: 249ff.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ^ Greenfield 1985, p. 709–710.
- ISBN 978-0-19-507993-7.
- ^ "Brāhmī | writing system". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-05-29.
- ^ "Cyrus the Great: History's most merciful conqueror?". Culture. 2019-05-06. Archived from the original on May 13, 2019. Retrieved 2020-09-07.
- ISBN 1-885923-39-2.[dead link]
- ^ The Online Critical Pseudepigrapha Archived 2007-12-31 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Huehnergard, John and Jo Ann Hackett. The Hebrew and Aramaic languages. In The Biblical World (2002), Volume 2 (John Barton, ed.). P.19
- ^ Gzella 2015, p. 213.
- ^ Durkin-Meisterernst, Desmond (October 14, 2005). "Manichean script". Encyclopedia Iranica.
- ^ "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
- ^ "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
Sources
- Bae, Chul-hyun (2004). "Aramaic as a Lingua Franca During the Persian Empire (538-333 B.C.E.)". Journal of Universal Language. 5: 1–20. .
- Beyer, Klaus (1986). The Aramaic Language: Its Distribution and Subdivisions. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISBN 9783525535738.
- Brock, Sebastian P. (1989). "Three Thousand Years of Aramaic Literature". ARAM Periodical. 1 (1): 11–23.
- JSTOR 3267414.
- ISBN 9780802848468.
- Folmer, Margaretha (1995). The Aramaic Language in the Achaemenid Period: A Study in Linguistic Variation. Leuven: Peeters Publishers. ISBN 9789068317404.
- Folmer, Margaretha (2012). "Imperial Aramaic as an Administrative Language of the Achaemenid Period". The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. Berlin-Boston: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 587–598. ISBN 9783110251586.
- Jastrow, Otto (2008). "Old Aramaic and Neo-Aramaic: Some Reflections on Language History". Aramaic in its Historical and Linguistic Setting. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 1–10. ISBN 9783447057875.
- ISBN 9780521200912.
- Gzella, Holger (2008). "Aramaic in the Parthian Period: The Arsacid Inscriptions". Aramaic in its Historical and Linguistic Setting. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 107–130. ISBN 9783447057875.
- Gzella, Holger (2012a). "Imperial Aramaic". The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. Berlin-Boston: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 574–586. ISBN 9783110251586.
- Gzella, Holger (2012b). "Late Imperial Aramaic". The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. Berlin-Boston: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 598–609. ISBN 9783110251586.
- Gzella, Holger (2015). A Cultural History of Aramaic: From the Beginnings to the Advent of Islam. Leiden-Boston: Brill. ISBN 9789004285101.
- ISBN 9789042908598.
- JSTOR 43366019.
- Stefanovic, Zdravko (1992). The Aramaic of Daniel in the Light of Old Aramaic. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ISBN 9780567132543.
- Younger, Kenneth Lawson (2016). A Political History of the Arameans: From Their Origins to the End of Their Polities. Atlanta: SBL Press. ISBN 9781628370843.