{"id":170,"date":"2011-01-30T00:01:17","date_gmt":"2011-01-30T08:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/?p=170"},"modified":"2011-04-03T21:48:08","modified_gmt":"2011-04-04T04:48:08","slug":"aramaic-syria-1000-bc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/30\/aramaic-syria-1000-bc\/","title":{"rendered":"Aramaic &#8212; Syria, 900 BC"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_174\" style=\"width: 110px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/phoenicianS1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-174\" class=\"size-full wp-image-174\" title=\"phoenicianS\" src=\"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/phoenicianS1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"151\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-174\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aramaic &quot;s&quot;<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Aramaic script was a very important writing system.\u00a0 While the <a href=\"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/29\/phoenician-1050-bc-lebanon\/\">Phoenician script<\/a> spread westward via sea trading, Aramaic script spread eastward via land trading.\u00a0\u00a0 It was the major trade language along much of the Silk Road, and was the official language of the Achaemenid Empire in Persia from about 500 BC to 331 BC.<\/p>\n<p>The careful reader will note that I used the same image for this post as I did for yesterday&#8217;s Phoenician script post; this is not an accident.\u00a0 Phoenician script and Aramaic script <em>look<\/em> practically identical at their beginning.\u00a0 In addition to the shapes of the letters diverging over time, Aramaic innovated (some) vowels.<\/p>\n<p>Phoenician did not have signs for vowels, only consonants.\u00a0 Aramaic, however, pressed three of the Phoenician consonant symbols into double-duty as long vowels.\u00a0 Sometimes those characters would be consonants, sometimes they would be vowels.\u00a0 This technique is known as <em>matres lectionis<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Links: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aramaic_alphabet\">Wikipedia<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ancientscripts.com\/aramaic.html\">Ancient Scripts<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/writing\/aramaic.htm\">Omniglot<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.museumstuff.com\/learn\/topics\/History_of_the_Aramaic_language::sub::Old_Aramaic\">History of Aramaic<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aramaic script was a very important writing system.\u00a0 While the Phoenician script spread westward via sea trading, Aramaic script spread eastward via land trading.\u00a0\u00a0 It was the major trade language along much of the Silk Road, and was the official &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/30\/aramaic-syria-1000-bc\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abjad","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/glyphs.webfoot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}