Aramaic alphabet
Aramaic was for a long time (between the later
Assyrian empire and the
Abbasid Caliphate) a
lingua franca in the
Middle East; its alphabet, though itself derived from the
Phoenician alphabet, therefore superseded the Old Hebrew alphabet that had been independently descended from the
Phoenician alphabet. It is no longer the case that Aramaic has a single alphabet; rather, just as
Aramaic has diversified into a family of closely related languages, the Aramaic alphabet has likewise become a family of closely related alphabets, chief among them
Syriac alphabet, Mandaic alphabet,
Hebrew alphabet, Palmyrenean alphabet, Nabataean alphabet. However, before splitting up, the Aramaic alphabet went through two principal stages: an early period, during which it closely resembled its ancestor the
Phoenician alphabet, and the later period known as
Imperial Aramaic, very closely resembling its descendant the modern
Hebrew alphabet. The Aramaic alphabet is generally accepted as the
Old Turkic alphabet, the
Arabic alphabet, and, ultimately, the
Mongolian alphabet, and more controversially may be the ancestor of the
Indic alphabets,
See also