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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Elaine Keown <elaine_keown AT yahoo.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] history of square script
  • Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 09:31:28 -0800

On 04/12/2003 16:39, Elaine Keown wrote:

Elaine Keown
central Texas

Hello:

I'm looking for help on the history of Aramaic or
Hebrew square script---I'm looking at them as,
basically, a unit.
I assume square script starts in Elephantine in Egypt
about 495 B.C., develops into slightly later square
script in Qumran documents, but what then?
At Qumran, so far, I think 50-60% of the letters
(depends on document) look modern to me (for the mss
which *are* in square script).
But after Qumran, how long is the hiatus before we get
to 100% of the letters appearing modern? In Birnbaum,
he seems to indicate it's another 600 years---I was
very surprised by that........

I also wondered if the Cairo Geniza had examples of
slightly later square script development?
I'm drawing sample letters to re-use in a Web
document, so references with photo/drawn facsimiles
appreciated.

Thanks for all help--Elaine Keown


Elaine, I think this all depends on how you define "look modern". I take this as meaning "have almost exactly the same shape as in traditional printed Bible texts". At least, it would seem to mean that if you consider that only 50-60% of Qumran letters "look modern". If you are talking about having shapes that are immediately recognisable by Hebraists today, from a quick look at an extract from 1Q Isaiah I would say 80-90%. And looking at an alphabet from Elephantine, things are not much worse: samekh and ayin are now unrecognisable and some others ambiguous, but we are still talking about 50-60% with basically their modern shapes.

And we may be able to trace things back before Elephantine, even if these are the oldest surviving texts in "square" script. The Palmyrene alphabet given in http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2311.pdf, figure 5.5 column XVIII, is in fact more like modern Hebrew than Elephantine is; but the table in that same document suggests that it separated from Hebrew at a date before the Elephantine texts. But 800 BCE Aramaic shapes seem to have been more like paleo-Hebrew.

Jack Kilmon offers fonts based on Elephantine and other early shapes, at http://www.historian.net/files.htm. See also http://www.historian.net/hxwrite.htm which gives Genesis 1:1 in several different script variants.

But I am still confused. I read, for example at http://www.peshitta.org/initial/aramaic.html, that:

Aramaic can be dated to five periods, dating from inscriptions that go back to the first millennium B.C.:

* Old Aramaic, 925-700
* Official or Imperial (Assyrian) Aramaic, 700-200 (when the
language was still uniform)...

but I can't find any clear details or examples of what script was used for that "Official or Imperial Aramaic", other than the Elephantine papyri. So it remains unclear to me whether the square script was the generally used form of imperial Aramaic, as some state, or was a later and specifically Jewish innovation, as claimed by others. The evidence from Palmyrene favours the former, but I am not sure either way.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/






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