The Palmyrene alphabet was a historical Semitic alphabet used to write Palmyrene Aramaic. It was used between 100 BCE and 300 CE in Palmyra in the Syrian desert. The oldest surviving Palmyrene inscription dates to 44 BCE. The last surviving inscription dates to 274 CE, two years after Palmyra was sacked by Roman Emperor

Aurelian Aurelian ( la, Lucius Domitius Aurelianus; 9 September 214 October 275) was a Roman emperor, who reigned during the Crisis of the Third Century, from 270 to 275. As emperor, he won an unprecedented series of military victories which reunited ...

, ending the Palmyrene Empire. Use of the Palmyrene language and script declined, being replaced with Greek and Latin. The Palmyrene alphabet was derived from cursive versions of the

Aramaic alphabet The ancient Aramaic alphabet was adapted by Arameans from the Phoenician alphabet and became a distinct script by the 8th century BC. It was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Ferti ...

and shares many of its characteristics: * Twenty-two letters with only consonants represented * Written horizontally from right-to-left * Numbers written right-to-left using a non-decimal system Palmyrene was normally written without spaces or punctuation between words and sentences ( scriptio continua style). Two forms of the Palmyrene alphabet were developed: The rounded, cursive form derived from the Aramaic alphabet and later a decorative, monumental form developed from the cursive Palmyrene. Both the cursive and monumental forms commonly used orthographic ligatures.

Characters

Numbers

Palmyrene used a non-decimal system which built up numbers using combinations of their symbols for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, and 20. It is similar to the system used for Aramaic which built numbers using their symbols for 1, 2, 3, 10, 20, 100, 1000, and 10000.

Letters

There are some styles in which the 'r'-letter (resh) is the same as the 'd'-letter (dalesh) with a dot on top, but there are styles in which the two letters are visually distinct.

Ligation Ligation may refer to: * Ligation (molecular biology), the covalent linking of two ends of DNA or RNA molecules * In medicine, the making of a ligature (tie) * Chemical ligation, the production of peptides from amino acids * Tubal ligation, a meth ...

, after b, ḥ, m, n, and q before some other consonants was common in some inscriptions but was not obligatory. There are also two fleurons (left-sided and right-sided) that tend to appear near numbers.

Decipherment

Examples of Palmyrene inscriptions were printed as far back as 1616, but accurate copies of Palmyrene/Greek bilingual inscriptions were not available until 1753. The Palmyrene alphabet was deciphered in 1754, literally overnight, by Abbé

Jean-Jacques Barthélemy Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (20 January 1716 – 30 April 1795) was a French scholar who became the first person to decipher an extinct language. He deciphered the Palmyrene alphabet in 1754 and the Phoenician alphabet in 1758. Early years Barth� ...

using these new, accurate copies of bilingual inscriptions.

Unicode

Palmyrene was added to the Unicode Standard in June, 2014 with the release of version 7.0. The Unicode block for Palmyrene is U+10860–U+1087F:

Gallery

File:Inscription_Palmyra_Louvre_AO2205.jpg, Funerary slabstone bearing a Palmyrene inscription (

Musée du Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the '' Venus de Milo''. A central ...

) File:Palmyrenian_relief_Louvre_AO1556.jpg, Relief with Palmyrene/Greek bilingual inscription (

) File:Palmyra_Julius_Aurelius_Zenobius_inscription.jpg, Column at Palmyra with Palmyrene/Greek bilingual inscription in honor of Julius Aurelius Zenobius

References

{{list of writing systems Abjad writing systems Obsolete writing systems Aramaic languages