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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Doug M: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Ausarian.: [qb] Doug, My question to you is: Do you find any similarities at all, across the alleged "Proto-Sinaitic-descended" scripts layed out in the image posted earlier, comparing Aramaic, Nabataean, Arabic and Syriac scripts? Upon closely examining the letters in the images posted, here's my estimation of similarities [i]based on alphabetic correspondences[/i], not mere [i]random[/i] resemblances of letters upon visualization: [CODE]Alpha. Demotic "Near Eastern" scripts k- 1 0 r - 0 1 n - 1 0 m - 0 1(Nabataean) q - 0 1 p - 0 1(first Arabic, then others) t(dot) 0 1 b - 0 1 y - 0 0 ` - 0 1 (Nabataean) g- 0 1(Aramaic, then Nabataean) s - 0 1(Nabataean) l- 0 1 w- 0 .5(partial resemblance upper hand goes to that vis-ΰ-vis Arabic, when it looks like for Syriac, the curvature was not taken all the way}[/CODE]Looks to me that Syriac is still more inclined towards the other Proto-Sinaitic 'sub-script' counterparts. Specifically how were you making [i]mano a mano[/i] comparisons between the letters across the scripts, if not the way I went about it? You make a case that Aramaic interestingly [i]"began to exhibit many of the more cursive forms"[/i] around about the time when Assyrians invaded Egypt, but Aramaic isn't cursive. As for the Nabataean script, which allegedly developed from Aramaic, it emerged only at ca. 3rd century BC, lest you are referring to the Brahmi branch, which isn't exactly cursive either and whose dating to anywhere between ca. 6th century and 4th century isn't as clear as its more confident dating to ca. 3rd century BC. And even if one were to accept the high end dates attributed to Brahmi, Syraic is not an alleged descendant of Brahmi. Alleged cursive variants of Brahmi script appear from the 3rd century onwards, well beyond the origin date attributed to Demotic [6th century BC]. But what the heck; I'm willing to entertain a demonstration showing how Brahmi must have developed from the more cursive Demotic. You earlier said that all cursive scripts derived from Hieratic, as opposed to Demotic, and when pressed to demonstrate how this extends to southeast Asian scripts, you're mum about it. But the question that also needs to be asked about that, is why then was Hieratic simply not adopted earlier on, as opposed to proto-Sinaitic? Hieratic had been around since the pre-dynastic era. [/qb][/QUOTE]Yes there was a cursive form of Aramaic. It began with the growth of Aramaic as a lingua franca under the Assyrians and continued with the development of Imperial Aramaic, so named because it was the official script of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. [QUOTE] From 700 BCE, the language began to spread in all directions, but lost much of its homogeneity. Different dialects emerged in Mesopotamia, Babylonia, the Levant and Egypt. However, the Akkadian-influenced Aramaic of Assyria, and then Babylon, started to come to the fore. As described in 2 Kings 18:26, Hezekiah, king of Judah, negotiates with Assyrian ambassadors in Aramaic so that the common people would not understand. Around 600 BCE, Adon, a Canaanite king, uses Aramaic to write to the Egyptian Pharaoh. 'Chaldee' or 'Chaldean Aramaic' used to be common terms for the Aramaic of the Chaldean dynasty of Babylonia. It was used to describe Biblical Aramaic, which was, however, written in a later style. It is not to be confused with the modern language Chaldean Neo-Aramaic. [edit] Imperial Aramaic Around 500 BCE, following the Achaemenid conquest of Mesopotamia under Darius I, Aramaic (as had been used in that region) was adopted by the conquerors as the "vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast empire with its different peoples and languages. The use of a single official language, which modern scholarship has dubbed Official Aramaic or Imperial Aramaic, can be assumed to have greatly contributed to the astonishing success of the Achaemenids in holding their far-flung empire together for as long as they did".[5] In 1955, Richard Frye questioned the classification of Imperial Aramaic as an 'official language', noting that no surviving edict expressly and unambiguously accorded that status to any particular language.[6] Frye reclassifies Imperial Aramaic as the lingua franca of the Achaemenid territories, suggesting then that the Achaemenid-era use of Aramaic was more pervasive than generally thought. Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised; its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect, and the inevitable influence of Persian gave the language a new clarity and robust flexibility. For centuries after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire (in 331 BCE), Imperial Aramaic or near enough for it to be recognisable would remain an influence on the various native Iranian languages. Aramaic script and as ideograms Aramaic vocabulary would survive as the essential characteristics of the Pahlavi writing system.[7] One of the largest collections of Imperial Aramaic texts is that of the Persepolis fortification tablets, which number about five hundred.[8] Many of the extant documents witnessing to this form of Aramaic come from Egypt, and Elephantine in particular. Of them, the best known is the Wisdom of Ahiqar, a book of instructive aphorisms quite similar in style to the biblical book of Proverbs. Achaemenid Aramaic is sufficiently uniform that it is often difficult to know where any particular example of the language was written. Only careful examination reveals the occasional loan word from a local language. A group of thirty Aramaic documents from Bactria have been recently discovered. An analysis was published in November 2006. The texts, which were rendered on leather, reflect the use of Aramaic in the fourth-century-BCE Achaemenid administration of Bactria and Sogdiana.[9] [/QUOTE]From: http://static.wikipedia.org/new/wikipedia/en/articles/a/r/a/Aramaic_language.html [QUOTE] Semitic language originally spoken by the ancient Aramaeans. The earliest Aramaic texts are inscriptions in an alphabet of Phoenician origin found in the northern Levant dating from c. 850 to 600 BC. The period 600 200 BC saw a dramatic expansion of Aramaic, leading to the development of a standard form known as Imperial Aramaic. In later centuries, as "Standard Literary Aramaic," it became a linguistic model. Late (or Classical) Aramaic (c. AD 200 1200) has an abundant literature, both in Syriac and in Mandaic (see Mandaeanism). With the rise of Islam, Arabic rapidly supplanted Aramaic as a vernacular in South Asia. Modern Aramaic (Neo-Aramaic) comprises West Neo-Aramaic, spoken in three villages northeast of Damascus, Syria, and East Neo-Aramaic, a group of languages spoken in scattered settlements of Jews and Christians in southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, and northwestern Iran, and by modern Mandaeans in the Shatt Al-'Arab. Since c. 1900 persecution has forced most contemporary East Neo-Aramaic-speakers, who number several hundred thousand, into diaspora communities around the world. [/QUOTE]From: http://www.answers.com/topic/aramaic Again, the growth of Imperial Aramaic, as a distinct form separate from its Phoenician forebear took place at about the same time as the growth and expansion of Assyria and its conquest of Egypt in 600 BC. Evidence for Imperial Aramaic comes mainly from Egypt in the body of the Elephantine papyri mentioned earlier. [URL=http://books.google.com/books?id=pZ53zpMQNLEC&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=Imperial+Aramaic&source=web&ots=-e1AszYPUB&sig=JxybsrmvgN2XCft5-gt5dGIcKEE&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=12&ct=result#PPA15,M1]http://books.google.com/books?id=pZ53zpMQNLEC&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=Imperial+Aramaic&source=web&ots=-e1AszYPUB&sig=JxybsrmvgN2XCft5-gt5dGIcKEE&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=12&ct= result#PPA15,M1[/URL] Time frame of Aramaic development: [IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/618fd6c196be998098c23b52d6d58237.png[/IMG] [/QB][/QUOTE]
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