The Aramaeans in Ancient Syria

chapter four

Language and Script

holger gzella

1. introduction

aramaic first appeared on the stage of history when several newly emer­
ging kingdoms, or chiefdoms, decided to use it as a written language
du ring the opening centuries of the iron age. this process coincided with
a change from syllabic cuneiform to alphabetic scribal culture and the rise
of a novel style of public epigraphy, formerly unattested in Syria­palestine,
by means of which local rulers striving for prestige among their peers
overtly celebrated their deeds. from a comparative point of view, aramaic
constitutes a sister branch of the idiom used in the Bronze­age city­state
of ugarit, on the one hand, and canaanite, which comprises languages fur­
ther south in the speech area such as hebrew, phoenician, and Moabite,
on the other. all three branches can be subsumed under the more general
rubric “northwest Semitic” and thus share a common origin according to
a widespread model of historical linguistics. in addition, aramaic also par­
ticipated in a number of common structural developments that affected
the languages of Syria­palestine during the iron age, especially the loss of
morphological case marking, a restructuring of the verbal system, and the
rise of a definite article.1

1.1 Features of Aramaic

the linguistic situation in Syria­palestine, however, was already diversi­
fied during the Late Bronze age. although aramaic cannot be directly
connected to any of the Bronze­age manifestations of northwest Semitic,
it exhibits a number of grammatical and lexical traits that set it apart
from both contemporaneous canaanite and earlier ugaritic.2 Several of
these can be identified even in the largely consonantal writing system:

1 the northwest Semitic background of aramaic is briefly described in gzella 2011a.

2 gianto 2008 succinctly outlines the early history of aramaic as a language.