ARAMAIC ALPHABET

major writing system in the Middle East in the latter half of the 1st millennium BC. Derived from the North Semitic script, the Aramaic alphabet was developed in the 10th and 9th centuries BC and came into prominence after the conquest of the Aramaean states by Assyria in the 9th and 8th centuries BC. The Aramaic language and script were used as a lingua franca over all of the Middle East, and documents and inscriptions in the Aramaic alphabet have been found in Greece, India, northern Arabia, and Egypt. The oldest inscription in Aramaic script yet discovered dates from approximately 850 BC. The Aramaic alphabet consists of 22 letters, all indicating consonants, and it is written from right to left. It is ancestral to Square Hebrew and the modern Hebrew alphabet, the Nabataean and modern Arabic scripts, the Palmyrene alphabet, and the Syriac, as well as hundreds of other writing systems used at some time in Asia east of Syria. Aramaic also has been influential in the development of such alphabets as the Georgian, Armenian, and Glagolitic.