This earliest type of the Sem. A. gradually passes into another, somewhat more cursive, which goes by the name of the Sidonian, its chief repre- sentative being the great inscription on the magni- ficent ba.salt sarcophagus of Eshmunazar, king of Sidon, now in the Louvre, which is a.ssigned to the end cf the 5th cent. B.C. Out of this Sidonian type was evolved the Arama-nn A., which was destined to rejilace the Pluen. after the ileca<lence of the Ph<cn. power. The great tra<le route from the Ked Sea and Egypt to Babylon pas.sed tliroiigh Damu.scus, llamath, and Carcheiiiish, and the trade fell into the hands of the Aranncans, the pconle of N. Syria. Hence, on the iiolitiial decline of tlie Phcen. cities, the Aramu'au language ami A. became the medium of commercial intercourse throughout W. Asia. At Nineveh in the Tlh cent. B.C., and at liabylon in the Gth, the Sidonian type begins to he replaced by the Araniican, whose continuous development may be traced from the 5th to the Ist cent. H.C., lirst on the coins struck by Persian satraps of Asia Minor, and then by the aid of mortuary inscriptions and papyri from Egypt, which carry on the record after the con- (lUfsts of Alexander had put an end to the Persian satrapies. An inspection of col. 4 in the table will
74
ALPHABET
ALPH.i;US
show that the chief characteristics of the Aramaean A. — due evidently to the free use of the reed pen and papyrus — are a progressive opening of the closed loops of the letters beth, daleth, teth, 'ayin, koph, and resh ; while he, vau, zayin, heth, and tau tend to lose their distinctive bars. At the same time the script continually becomes more cursive in character, the tails of the letters curving more and more to the left, whUe the introduction of ligatures led to a distinction between the final and the medial or initial forma of certain letters. These changes, whUe they made writing easier and more rapid, at the same time made it less legible.
On the return of the Jews from the Bab. exile, the ancient A. of Israel, though retained on the Maccabaean coins, and possibly in copies of the law, was gradually abandoned for the more cursive but far inferior Aramaean, which had become the mercantile script of the W. provinces of Persia. A Jewish tradition, preserved in the Talm., attributed this change to Ezra ; but there can be no doubt that both scripts were for a time employed concurrently — the Aramaean by the mercantile classes and the returning exiles, and the older A. by those who, like the Samaritans, bad been left behind in the land.
The older Phoen. style had fortunately been transmitted to the GreeKs before the Aramaean de- formation had taken place. Consequently the Rom.
A. which we have inherited, being a Western form of the Greek A., has retained in such letters as
B, D, O, Q, R, E, F, H those loops and bars whose disappearance in the Heb., Syr., Arab., and other A. 8 descended from the Ar&msean, has contributed to make them so illegible. Our own capitals are, in fact, much nearer to the primitive Phien. or Isr. A. than any of the existing Sem. A.s, and it is to this retention of the archaic forms that they owe their excellence and general superiority. The closed loop of D and R and the upper loop of B repro- duce the closed triangles of the earlier bem. script, which were lost by the Aramaean deformation, and are consequently much superior to the formless shapes t t 3 which we have in modem Hebrew.
When the Seleucidan empire had come to a close, the Aramffan broke up into national scripts, the A. of Eastern Sjria developing at Bozra, Petra, and the Hauran into the Nabataean, which was the parent of Arabic, whUe the Aramjean of N. Syria developed at Edessa into Syriac, and that of S. Syria, at Jerus. and Bab., into what is called Hebrew. The early form of square Heb. used at Jerus. in the time of our Lord, with which He must Himself have been familiar, and in which probably the roll was written which He read in the synagogue (Lk 4"), is given in col. 5 of the table. This A. has been obtained from monuments of the Herodian period found in Galilee or at Jerus., all of which must be anterior to the siege by Titus. These inscriptions are chiefly from lombs ; but one of them, of special interest, is a fragment of one of the notices, enjoining silence and reverent be- haviour, set up, as we learn from Josephus, when the temple was rebuilt by Herod.
The materials for the history of the Heb. A. during the period of the dispersion, from the 1st cent, to the 10th, when it practically assumed its present form, have been gathered from regions curiously remote. Some are from the Jewish Catacombs at Rome, many from the Crimea, others from the Jewish cemeteries at Vienne, Aries, and Narbonne in Gaul, at Tortosa in Spain, Venosa in Italy, from Prag, Aden, Tillis, and Derbend, and, not least in importance, the writing on some cabal- istic bowls found at Babj-lon, dating from the 4th to the 7th cent. A.D. (see col. 6). The earliest exist- ing codex, the A. of which is given in col. 7, dates from the beginning of the 10th cent., when the