18 Facts About Old Aramaic

Old Aramaic refers to the earliest stage of the Aramaic language, known from the Aramaic inscriptions discovered since the 19th century.

The alphabet of Old Aramaic then seems to be based on the Phoenician alphabet, and there is a unity in the written language.

Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised; its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect, and the inevitable influence of Old Persian gave the language a new clarity and robust flexibility.

One of the largest collections of Imperial Old Aramaic texts is that of the Persepolis fortification tablets, which number about five hundred.

Achaemenid Old Aramaic is sufficiently uniform that it is often difficult to know where any particular example of the language was written.

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Biblical Old Aramaic is the term for the Old Aramaic passages interspersed in the Hebrew Bible.

Biblical Old Aramaic presented several challenges for later writers who were engaged in early Biblical studies.

The "Chaldean misnomer" was eventually abandoned, when modern researchers showed that Old Aramaic dialect used in Hebrew Bible was not related with ancient Chaldeans and their language.

However, a post-Achaemenid Old Aramaic continued to flourish from Judea, Assyria, Mesopotamia, through the Syrian Desert and into northern Arabia and Parthia.

Babylonian Documentary Old Aramaic is a dialect in use from the 3rd century onwards.

Nabataean language was the Western Old Aramaic variety used by the Nabateans of the Negev, including the kingdom of Petra.

Some Nabataean Old Aramaic inscriptions exist from the early days of the kingdom, but most are from the first four centuries CE.

Palmyrene Old Aramaic is the dialect that was in use in the city state of Palmyra in the Syrian Desert from 44 BC to 274 CE.

Under the early third-century BCE Parthian Empire, whose government used Koine Greek but whose native language was Parthian, the Parthian language and the Old Aramaic-derived writing system used for Parthian both gained prestige.

However, the diverse regional dialects of Late Ancient Old Aramaic continued alongside them, often as simple, spoken languages.

Old Aramaic came to coexist with Canaanite dialects, eventually completely displacing Phoenician and Hebrew around the turn of the 4th century CE.

Seven dialects of Western Old Aramaic were spoken in the vicinity of Judaea in Jesus' time.

Old Aramaic Judaean was the prominent dialect of Jerusalem and Judaea.