Aramaic Scripts
Aramaic language has a long and complex history, of which we know much, but far from all. It developed in the Ancient Near East as early as the 10th century BCE, and served for centuries as both a spoken and a liturgical language for Middle Eastern Jews and Christians. It was the lingua franca of the Persian Empire, was spoken during the time of Jesus, has diverged into different spoken dialects, and survives to this day as a spoken language to some small communities and as a liturgical language to many others.
Along the journey Aramaic was written in several different scripts. All of them share certain characteristics: they are abjad alphabets which only use characters for vowels in a limited fashion; they are written from right to left in horizontal lines; and they use a nearly identical system of representing Aramaic’s inventory of sounds. However, they are also very different.
The Early- Aramaic script a.k.a. Paleo-Hebrew was used to write Aramaic for a millennium, but eventually fell almost entirely out of use. Closely related to the Phoenician Alphabet, it served as the main writing system of the Assyrian Empire, and was used early on for the texts of the Hebrew Bible. It uses partially-rounded disconnected characters.
The Square script a.k.a. Hebrew alphabet was used to write Aramaic from the time of the Persian Empire to this day, replacing Early-Aramaic for both Aramaic and Hebrew. It is currently used for the text of the Hebrew Bible, as well as writing Modern Hebrew. It uses square disconnected characters.
The Syriac script has been used for Aramaic and Neo-Aramaic throughout the last two millennia. It serves as the liturgical script of Syrian Christians, used for writing the text of the Peshitta Bible. It uses rounded cursive characters which connect within a word.
