Re: Assyrian character

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.)

                                                    Andreas


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