The Aramaeans in Ancient Syria

76 holger gzella

Sefire i–iii = Kai 222–224; Zakkur = Kai 202; Bar­hadad = Kai 201; graf­
fiti from hamath = Kai 203–213; Samʾalian = Kai 214–215; aramaic from
Zincirli = Kai 216–221. nonetheless, the respective editiones principes
with their photographs, drawings, and extensive philological notes should
always be consulted.

2. Script and orthography

2.1 The Breakthrough of Alphabetic Writing

after the collapse of cuneiform scribal culture in Syria and palestine on
the threshold from the Late Bronze to the early iron age, alphabetic writ­
ing became the standard in the chancelleries of various emerging king­
doms. the decline of syllabic cuneiform coincided with the appearance
of new official languages like the aramaic varieties, phoenician, hebrew,
Moabite, and others, all supposedly based on existing though erstwhile
unwritten local vernaculars, in epigraphic documents. the reasons under­
lying this process are not yet well understood, but one may suppose that
rulers who had recently risen to power consciously promoted their dialects
to written, standardized, idioms. in doing so, they could rely on a writ­
ing system that, except for ugarit and its vicinity, was formerly attested
only for low­profile usages such as property marks or simple dedications.
consequently, this writing system appears to have been less affected by
the breakdown of scribal institutions following the grave socioeconomic
changes that washed over Syria­palestine at the end of the Late Bronze
age. it was thus most readily available when administrative and royal pro­
paganda needed a reliable form of recordkeeping.

2.2 From the Phoenician to the Aramaic Alphabet

Because the earliest aramaic witnesses are, in terms of palaeography,
essentially identical to the 10th­century Byblian inscriptions, it is com­
monly assumed that the 1st­millennium type of the alphabetic script
spread from the phoenician city of Byblos at the beginning of the early
iron age.18 in all likelihood, the prestige of this ancient center for writing

characters, supplemented by textual and grammatical notes. dion 1974: 5–43 presents the
Samʾalian material in Latin transliteration together with a french translation.
18 for a succinct survey of this process, see naveh 1970 and, more recently, Millard 2011.
further bibliographical references can be found in Beyer 2004: 14.