Aramaic

Aramaic is a Northwest Semitic language that arose among the Aramean tribes of Syria, with inscriptions dating to the eleventh century BCE. Adopted by Neo-Assyrian kings from 911 BCE, Imperial Aramaic became the administrative lingua franca of the Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid empires.

Written in an alphabet derived from Phoenician, it gave rise to the square Hebrew script and, at Edessa, to the Syriac alphabet. It was the everyday speech of the Jews of the Second Temple period, and the language of parts of the Hebrew Bible, the Targums and the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds.

After the Arab conquests of the seventh century Arabic gradually replaced it as a vernacular, but Classical Syriac lived on as the liturgical language of Syriac Christianity, Mandaic served the Mandaeans, and spoken Neo-Aramaic dialects survived in the mountains and villages of the Near East.