Old Aramaic

Old Aramaic
Ancient Aramaic
RegionFertile Crescent (northern & western Syria)
EraIron Age and classical antiquity (ca. 900–700 BC),
evolved into Imperial Aramaic (ca. 700–300 BC)
Dialects
Phoenician alphabet
Aramaic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3oar
oar
Glottologolda1245

Old Aramaic refers to the earliest stage of the Aramaic language, known from the Aramaic inscriptions discovered since the 19th century.

Emerging as the language of the city-states of the Arameans in the Fertile Crescent in the Early Iron Age, Old Aramaic was adopted as a lingua franca, and in this role was inherited for official use by the Achaemenid Empire during classical antiquity. After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, local vernaculars became increasingly prominent, fanning the divergence of an Aramaic dialect continuum and the development of differing written standards.

The language is considered to have given way to Middle Aramaic by the 3rd century (a conventional date is the rise of the Sasanian Empire in 224 AD).


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