Benjamin SuchardFinally made the connection between Imperial #Aramaic לחן 'temple servant', feminine לחנה,* and Biblical and later Aramaic לְחֵנָה 'concubine', 'wench' or something like that.
* That's 𐡋𐡇𐡍 and 𐡋𐡇𐡍𐡄 for my fellow Unicode freaks
From a set of about 50 mostly #Aramaic graffiti from Hama, Syria, before the Assyrians destroyed it in 720 BCE. These two write place names: Hama itself (Hamath), in pretty old-fashioned letters (c. 925–850?), and Qarqar, site of the famous 853 BCE battle between the Assyrians & a western coalition.
OT Textual Criticism Amateur
Spirituality & Religious StudiesDharma
This is a main concept in many Indian religions. It comes from the Sanskrit dhr-, meaning ‘to hold, to support.’ Referring to the law that sustains things. In its most used sense, dharma refers to a person’s moral responsibilities or duties.
In Hinduism, dharma denotes behavior considered to be in accord with Rta (the order & custom that make life & the universe possible). This includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues, & ethics to form the “righteous way of living.” Dharma is believed to have trans-temporal validity & is 1 of the Purusartha.
In the Hindu tradition, Dharma isn’t a “1 size fits all” kind of deal. Often it’s divided into 2 primary categories:
- Sanatana Dharma (The Eternal Way)
- This refers to the absolute, universal duties that apply to everyone.
- Varnashrama Dharma (Specific Duty)
- This is where history & culture get complex. It suggests that your specific duty is determined by your stage in life (ashrama) & your role in society (varna).
Much of Indian epic literature, like the Mahabharata, focuses on “Dharma Yuddha” (a righteous war). The Bhagavad Gita is essentially a 700-verse philosophical crisis where the warrior Arjuna must decide between his familial affection & his Kshatriya (warrior) dharma.
In Buddhism, dharma (in Pali: dhamma) refers to the teachings of THE Buddha & to the true nature of reality. The Dharma is the “truth” that the Buddha realized under the Bodhi tree. It is symbolized by the Dharmachakra (the 8-Spoked Wheel), representing the Noble 8-Fold Path.
In Buddhist philosophy, dhamma/dharma is also the term for specific “phenomena” & the ultimate truth. In a technical sense, “dharmas” refer to the fundamental building blocks of experience. It’s the 2nd of the “Triple Gem” (Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha) that a practitioner looks to for liberation from suffering (dukkha).
In Jainism, dharma refers to the teachings of Tirthankara (Jina) & the body of doctrine of purification & moral transformation. Jainism agrees that Dharma involves virtue (specifically the “10 Virtues,” like forgiveness & humility), & it also defines Dharma as a substance called Dharmastikaya. This is the principle of motion. Just as water lets fish swim, Dharma is the medium that lets souls & matter move through the universe.
In Sikhism, dharma indicates the path of righteousness, proper religious practices, & performing moral duties.
The antonym (opposite) of dharma is adharma (“not dharma”). In common usage, adharma means that which is against nature, immoral, unethical, wrong, or unlawful. In Buddhism, dharma integrates the teachings & doctrines of the founder of Buddhism, the Buddha.
In the mid-20th century, an inscription of the Indian Mauryan Emperor Asoka from the year 258 BCE was found in Afghanistan, the Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription. This rock inscription contains Greek & Aramaic texts.
After a bloody conquest of Kalinga, Ashoka was struck by/with remorse. He converted to Buddhism & replaced the policy of Dig-vijaya (conquest by force) with Dharma-vijaya (conquest by piety). He carved “Dharma Edicts” onto massive stone pillars & rocks throughout the Indian subcontinent.
They weren’t just religious texts. They were also administrative orders promoting religious tolerance, animal welfare, & the planting of medicinal herbs.
The evolving literature of Hinduism links dharma to 2 other important ideals: Rta & Maya. Rta, in the Vedas, is the truth, & cosmic principle which regulates & coordinates the operation of the universe & everything within it. Maya, in the Rig-veda & later literature, means illusion, fraud, deception, magic that misleads & creates disorder. Thus is contrary to reality, laws, & rules that establish order, predictability & harmony.
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Hey, I reconstructed some #Aramaic letter names! Going back to around 500 BCE, I guess. The similarity to #Greek is usually explained via #Phoenician, but we don't actually have any Phoenician letter names AFAIK.
#TIL "the LORD of Hosts" (𐡉𐡄𐡄 𐡑𐡁𐡀𐡕, [yh]h ṣbʾt) is attested as a divine name on an #Aramaic ostracon from Elephantine. (First line, starting with the second 𐡄.)
Do we know why Targumic #Aramaic has אִיזֵל for the imperative 'go' and not אְזֵל**? Dissimilation? ASsimilation?
Steve CarusoThe perils of paleographic dating: a few Aramaic examples from Arabia https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/the-perils-of-paleographic-dating-a-few-aramaic-examples-from-arabia/ #Linguistics, #Aramaic, #Arabic, #Paleography
Benjamin SuchardThe perils of paleographic dating: a few Aramaic examples from Arabia
My last post included a quote by Michael Macdonald that concluded:
This text shows that different forms of the same letter within the Aramaic alphabet could be held in the memories of scribes, and presumably readers, and used as they pleased to achieve various effects. Such a conclusion is not particularly startling but it shows the dangers of trying to use supposed palaeographical sequences to date inscriptions.
This is in reference to the second of the three inscriptions on the picture below, the one that Macdonald says is in Tayma Aramaic. While most of the inscription is in something in between Imperial and Nabataean Aramaic, the first word is in nice, old-fashioned lapidary Imperial Aramaic. The effect is something like lead-in small caps in Latin typography:
Tʜɪꜱ ɪꜱ the funerary monument of …
I think this is a great point. While certain script styles may be typical of a certain time and place, that doesn’t mean they were strictly limited to that setting and you can never be 100% sure of a dating based on paleography alone. In this short post, I want to give two more examples.
First, here are two funerary inscriptions in Nabataean Aramaic (Macdonald, one of the editors, again considers the first one Tayma Aramaic). They are both dated, so we know they were written a century and a half apart (203 and 356 CE). But the earlier one has considerably more advanced letter forms than the later one. In each case, I’ll give you a transliteration in (Unicode’s pretty archaic) Nabataean and Arabic script so you can compare the letter shapes to those extremes.
Tayma, 203 CE𐢅𐢀 𐢕𐢘𐢜 𐢁𐢝𐢗𐢍𐢆
𐢕𐢃𐢑𐢋𐢀 𐢃𐢛 𐢍𐢈𐢖𐢘
𐢛𐢁𐢜 𐢞𐢍𐢓𐢌 𐢅𐢌 𐢁𐢚𐢍𐢒
𐢗𐢑𐢇𐢈𐢌 𐢗𐢓𐢛𐢒 𐢈𐢁𐢝𐢓𐢈
𐢁𐢊𐢈𐢇𐢌 𐢃𐢍𐢛𐢊 𐢁𐢍𐢛
𐢝𐢕𐢞 𐢮𐢮𐢮𐢮𐢭𐢬𐢩 𐢑𐢇𐢘𐢛𐢏𐢍𐢀
دا نفس اسعيه
نبلطا بر يو𐢖ف
راس تيمى دي اقيم
علهوي عمرم واسمو
احوهي بيرح اير
سنت 𐢮𐢮𐢮𐢮𐢭𐢬𐢩 لهفركيا
𐢅𐢕𐢆 …
𐢗𐢅𐢍𐢈𐢔 𐢃𐢛 𐢊𐢕𐢌 𐢃𐢛 𐢝𐢓𐢈𐢁𐢐 𐢛𐢍𐢜
𐢊𐢄𐢛𐢀 𐢑𐢓𐢈𐢍𐢆 𐢁𐢞𐢞𐢆 𐢃𐢛𐢞
𐢗𐢓𐢛𐢈 𐢃𐢛 𐢗𐢅𐢍𐢈𐢔 𐢃𐢛 𐢝𐢓𐢈𐢁𐢐
𐢛𐢍𐢜 𐢞𐢍𐢓𐢀 𐢅𐢌 𐢓𐢍𐢞𐢞 𐢃𐢍𐢛𐢊
𐢁𐢂 𐢝𐢕𐢞 𐢓𐢁𐢞𐢍𐢔 𐢈𐢊𐢓𐢝𐢍𐢔
𐢈𐢁𐢊𐢅𐢌 𐢃𐢛𐢞 𐢝𐢕𐢍𐢔 𐢞𐢑𐢞𐢍𐢔
𐢈𐢞𐢓𐢕𐢌
دنه…
عديون بر حني بر سموال ريس
حجرا لموية اتته برت
عمرو بر عديون بر سموال
ريس تيما دي ميتت بيرح
اب سنت ماتين وحمسين
واحى برت سنين تلتين
وتمني
It’s also interesting that the older text is mostly in good Aramaic (with one or two interesting spelling mistakes), while the second one uses a more phonetic spelling of the Aramaic words and has borrowed two Arabic numbers. So the linguistic evidence at least points in the right direction, dating-wise.
The second and last example is a graffito that wasn’t published too long ago (Nehmé 2017), but that may deserve some more attention outside epigraphic circles. What appears to be the same inscription, dated to 548/9 CE, starts with the Aramaic phrase dkyr (𐢅𐢏𐢍𐢛) ‘may he be remembered’ written in a not terribly advanced Nabataeo-Arabic and then continues in the Arabic language and Paleo-Arabic script. The use of the cognate verb in the opening phrase (ذكر الإله ḏakara l-ʾilāhu ‘may God remember’) allows for a nice comparison of the two script types. Normally, we would consider these to be centuries apart, but they appear to have been inscribed by the same hand.
A site near Dumat al-Jandal, 548/9 CESo remember, kids, have fun dating inscriptions paleographically, but be careful out there.
#linguistics #Aramaic #Arabic #paleography
