Earliest Aramaic Inscription Uncovered in Syria - The BAS Library
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Home > Magazines > BAR > July/August 1981

Earliest Aramaic Inscription Uncovered in Syria

Statue of newly discovered king bears 10th century B.C. bilingual inscription

By Adam Mikaya

An extremely important inscription recently surfaced in Syria and the few prominent scholars who know of it have been buzzing with excitement. It is an Aramaic inscription dating from the tenth century B.C., consisting of 23 complete and well-preserved lines. Aramaic was the everyday language in Palestine during Jesus’ time. Aramaic spread to Palestine from Babylonia in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. and became the lingua franca of the ancient world. Until now the earliest substantial Aramaic inscription was the so-called Sefire inscription from the mid-eighth century B.C.1 While a few small, fragmentary and incomplete lines of Aramaic […]

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Endnotes

1.

See Gibson, Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, Vol. II, p. 19 (Oxford University Press, 1975).

2.

C.W. McEwan et al., Soundings at Tell Fakhariyah, University of Chicago Oriental Institute Publications, Volume LXXIX (University of Chicago Press, 1958).

3.

An inscription of Adad-Nirari II describing his campaign in Syria in 894 B.C. refers to Sikanu as being situated at the source of the Habor River. (See Albert Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, Part 2, Vol. II in Records of the Ancient Near East [Otto Harrassowitz, 1976] p. 90).