Re: Assyrian character
| From: | Wesley Parish <wes.parish@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, May 28, 2002, 10:53 |
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On Tue, 28 May 2002 08:05, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> Steg Belsky wrote:
> >On Sun, 26 May 2002 17:08:53 +0000 Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
> >
> >writes:
> > > When I earlier today, like any normal twenty-year old, was reading my
> > > pocket
> > > edition of Thucydides, I found a passage (Book IV, ch 50) in which
> > > an Persian envoy is said to have letters written in "assyrian
> > > character". Would that mean Cuneiform?
> > > Andreas
> >
> >-
> >
> >The first thing i thought of is that it could mean something like the
> >modern (post-Babylonian Exile) Hebrew alphabet, which is refered to in
> >Jewish religious sources as _ashurit_ "Assyrian", as opposed to _`ivrit_
> >"Hebrew" which refers to the old alphabet which was more similar to the
> >Phonecian alphabet.
>
> Would a Persian diplomat be likely to use any version of the Hebrew
> alphabet? (Or, we should presumeably say, the Hebrew abjad, in deference to
> the ongoing discussions of various classes of writing systems.)
That "Hebrew" alphabet was in common use by all the minor kingdoms, states,
statelets, etc, around the Levant around that time, eg Moab. The Phoenicians
were merely the last-surviving major power to make use of it - the
Carthaginians were using it when "cartago deletus est". It influenced the
Aramean alphabet quite a bit, but I think the Persians would've regarded it
as being too "rural", too "uncivilized" to warrant serious attention, let
alone diplomatic use. The Arameans were the trading force behind the
Persians by that time, so it was already in use all over the Fertile Crescent.
Wesley Parish
--
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Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
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