Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Michael Matsko <msm AT gwu.edu>]

Soren et. al.

   Muraoka and Porten's "A Grammar of Egyptian Armaic," Brill, 1998 has a
section on numbers as does Rosenthal's "A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic,"
Harrassowitz Verlag, 1995.  However Muraoka presents some tables and
concludes: "From the table above one amy make the following observations,
which are bound to be somewhat tentative on account of incomplete attestation.
. . "  Furthermore, Ifrah's "The Universal History of Numbers," Wiley, 2000,
translated from the French version "Histoire universelle des chiffres,"
Editions Robert Laffront, Paris, 1994 has some discussion and pictures.

      Michael Matsko
      Rosslyn, VA

>===== Original Message From Trevor & Julie Peterson <06peterson AT cua.edu>
=====
>I checked into this a little while ago. I didn't find anything in-depth.
>The World's Writing Systems has a chapter on numerals, and there was a
>book referenced in that chapter that I can't remember offhand. It's
>basically a history of numbers and has some material on the numeral
>system in Aramaic. (I had to wander over to the engineering library to
>find it.) If I remember right, it's actually borrowed from Egyptian, so
>you might try looking for something on that.
>
>Trevor Peterson
>CUA/Semitics
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:b-hebrew-
>> bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Søren Holst
>> Sent: Saturday, June 21, 2003 8:20 AM
>> To: Hebrew
>> Subject: [b-hebrew] Aramaic numeric signs
>>
>> A system for writing figures without spelling out the numerals as
>actual
>> words existed in Aramaic, the logic of the system being rather akin to
>> that
>> of Roman numerals. You easily pick it up from reading a few
>Elephantine
>> letters in Cowley's edition or the like.
>>
>> But has a systematic description of the system and its historical
>> development and variants (if any) been published anywhere? I've turned
>our
>> department library upside down to no avail :-(
>>
>> kol tuv
>> Soren, Copenhagen
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>
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Michael Matsko