With the exception of the Assyrio-Babylonian (cuneiform), all varieties of Semitic writing, although differing widely in some respects, are derived from one and the same original alphabet, represented on extant monuments most faithfully by the characters used on the stele of Mêšaʿ, king of Moab (see below, § 2 d), and in the old Phoenician inscriptions, of which the bronze bowls from a temple of Baal (CIS. i. 22 ff. and Plate IV) are somewhat earlier than Mêšaʿ. The old Hebrew writing, as it appears on the oldest monument, the Siloam inscription (see below, § 2 d), exhibits essentially the same character. The old Greek, and indirectly all European alphabets, are descended from the old Phoenician writing (see § 5 i).
[l] See the Table of Alphabets at the beginning of the Grammar, which shows the relations of the older varieties of Semitic writing to one another and especially the origin of the present Hebrew characters from their primitive forms. For a more complete view, see Gesenius' Scripturae linguaeque Phoeniciae monumenta, Lips. 1837, 4to, pt. i. p. 15 ff., and pt. iii. tab. 1-5. From numerous monuments since discovered, our knowledge of the Semitic characters, especially the Phoenician, has become considerably enlarged and more accurate. Cf. the all but exhaustive bibliography (from 1616 to 1896) in Lidzbarski's Handbuch der Nordsemitischen Epigraphik, i. p. 4 ff., and on the origin of the Semitic alphabet, ibid., p. I73ff., and Ephemeris (see the heading of § 1 a above), i. pp. 109 ff., 142, 261 ff., and his 'Altsemitische Texte', pt. i, Kanaanäische Inschriften (Moabite, Old-Hebrew, Phoenician, Punic), Giessen, 1907.—On the origin and development of the Hebrew characters and the best tables of alphabets, see § 5 a, last note, and especially § 5 e.
[m] 6. As regards the relative age of the Semitic languages, the oldest literary remains of them are to be found in the Assyrio-Babylonian (cuneiform) inscriptions,[1] with which are to be classed the earliest Hebrew fragments occurring in the old Testament (see § 2).
The earliest non-Jewish Aramaic inscriptions known to us are that of זכר king of Hamath (early eighth cent. B.C.), on which see Nöldeke, ZA. 1908, p. 376, and that found at Teima, in N. Arabia, in 1880, probably of the fifth cent. B.C., cf. E. Littmann in the Monist, xiv. 4 [and Cooke, op. cit., p. 195]. The monuments of Kalammus of Samʾal, in the reign of Shalmanezer II, 859-829 B.C. (cf. A. Šanda, Die Aramäer, Lpz. 1902, p. 26), and those found in 1888-1891 at Zenjîrlî in N. Syria, including the Hadad inscription of thirty-four lines (early eighth cent. B.C.) and the Panammu inscription (740 B.C.), are not in pure Aramaic. The Jewish-Aramaic writings begin about the time of Cyrus (cf. Ezr 6), specially important being the papyri from Assuan ed. by Sayce and Cowley, London, 1906 (and in a cheaper form by Staerk, Bonn, 1907), which are precisely dated from 471 to 411 B.C., and three others of 407 B.C. ed. by Sachau, Berlin, 1907.
- ↑ According to Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, i. p. ii ff., the inscriptions found at Nippur embrace the period from about 4000 to 450 b. c.
