Aramaic is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, southeastern Anatolia, Eastern Arabia and the Sinai Peninsula, where it has been continually written and spoken in different varieties for over three thousand years.
Hebrew is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages which also included Phoenician, Edomite, Moabite among others, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language until after 200 CE and as the liturgical language of Judaism and Samaritanism. The language was revived as a spoken language in the 19th century, and is the only successful large-scale example of linguistic revival. It is the only Canaanite language, as well as one of only two Northwest Semitic languages, with the other being Aramaic, still spoken today.
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew, Maltese and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis.
The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, and attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. In the history of writing systems, the Phoenician script also marked the first to have a fixed writing direction—while previous systems were multi-directional, Phoenician was written horizontally, from right to left. It developed directly from the Proto-Sinaitic script used during the Late Bronze Age, which was derived in turn from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Phoenician is an extinct Canaanite Semitic language originally spoken in the region surrounding the cities of Tyre and Sidon. Extensive Tyro-Sidonian trade and commercial dominance led to Phoenician becoming a lingua franca of the maritime Mediterranean during the Iron Age. The Phoenician alphabet spread to Greece during this period, where it became the source of all modern European scripts.
The Moabite language, also known as the Moabite dialect, is an extinct sub-language or dialect of the Canaanite languages, themselves a branch of Northwest Semitic languages, formerly spoken in the region described in the Bible as Moab in the early 1st millennium BC.
Ammonite is the extinct Canaanite language of the Ammonite people mentioned in the Bible, who used to live in modern-day Jordan, and after whom its capital Amman is named. Only fragments of their language survive—chiefly the 9th century BC Amman Citadel Inscription, the 7th–6th century BC Tel Siran bronze bottle, and a few ostraca. As far as can be determined from the small corpus, it was extremely similar to Biblical Hebrew, with some possible Aramaic influence including the use of the verb ‘bd (עבד) instead of the more common Biblical Hebrew ‘śh (עשה) for 'make'. The only other notable difference with Biblical Hebrew is the sporadic retention of feminine singular -t Ammonite also appears to have possessed largely typical correspondences of diphthongs, with words such as ywmt both preserving and showing a shift to, and other words such as yn exhibiting a shift of to ē much like Hebrew.
Edomite was a Northwest Semitic Canaanite language, very similar to Biblical Hebrew, Ekronite, Ammonite, Phoenician, Amorite and Sutean, spoken by the Edomites in Idumea in the 2nd and 1st millennium BCE. It is extinct and known only from an extremely small corpus, attested in a scant number of impression seals, ostraca, and a single late 7th or early 6th century BCE letter, discovered in Horvat Uza.
Biblical Hebrew, also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea. The term ʿiḇrîṯ 'Hebrew' was not used for the language in the Hebrew Bible, which was referred to as שְֹפַת כְּנַעַןśəp̄aṯ kənaʿan 'language of Canaan' or יְהוּדִיתYəhûḏîṯ 'Judean', but it was used in Koine Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts. The Hebrew language is attested in inscriptions from about the 10th century BCE, when it was almost identical to Phoenician and other Canaanite languages, and spoken Hebrew persisted through and beyond the Second Temple period, which ended in 70 CE with the siege of Jerusalem. It eventually developed into Mishnaic Hebrew, which was spoken until the 5th century.
Proto-Canaanite is the name given to:
- The Proto-Sinaitic script when found in Canaan, dating to about the 17th century BC and later.
- A hypothetical ancestor of the Phoenician script before some cut-off date, typically 1050 BC, with an undefined affinity to Proto-Sinaitic. No extant "Phoenician" inscription is older than 1000 BC. The Phoenician, Hebrew, and other Canaanite dialects were largely indistinguishable before that time.
The Paleo-Hebrew script, also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, including pre-Biblical and Biblical Hebrew, from southern Canaan, also known as the biblical kingdoms of Israel (Samaria) and Judah. It is considered to be the script used to record the original texts of the Bible due to its similarity to the Samaritan script; the Talmud states that the Samaritans still used this script. The Talmud described it as the "Livonaʾa script", translated by some as "Lebanon script". However, it has also been suggested that the name is a corrupted form of "Neapolitan", i.e. of Nablus. Use of the term "Paleo-Hebrew alphabet" is due to a 1954 suggestion by Solomon Birnbaum, who argued that "[t]o apply the term Phoenician [from Northern Canaan, today's Lebanon] to the script of the Hebrews [from Southern Canaan, today's Israel-Palestine] is hardly suitable". The Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets are two slight regional variants of the same script.
Ancient Semitic religion encompasses the polytheistic religions of the Semitic peoples from the ancient Near East and Northeast Africa. Since the term Semitic represents a rough category when referring to cultures, as opposed to languages, the definitive bounds of the term "ancient Semitic religion" are only approximate but exclude the religions of "non-Semitic" speakers of the region such as Egyptians, Elamites, Hittites, Hurrians, Mitanni, Urartians, Luwians, Minoans, Greeks, Phrygians, Lydians, Persians, Medes, Philistines and Parthians.
The West Semitic languages are a proposed major sub-grouping of Semitic languages. The term was first coined in 1883 by Fritz Hommel.
The Philistine language is the extinct language of the Philistines. Very little is known about the language, of which a handful of words survived as cultural loanwords in Biblical Hebrew, describing specifically Philistine institutions, like the seranim, the "lords" of the Philistine five cities ("pentapolis"), or the 'argáz receptacle, which occurs in 1 Samuel 6 and nowhere else, or the title padî.
Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze Age. The oldest coherent texts are in Ugaritic, dating to the Late Bronze Age, which by the time of the Bronze Age collapse are joined by Old Aramaic, and by the Iron Age by Sutean and the Canaanite languages.
The Suteans were a nomadic Semitic people who lived throughout the Levant, Canaan and Mesopotamia, specifically in the region of Suhum, during the Old Babylonian period. They were famous in Semitic epic poetry for being fierce nomadic warriors, and like the ʿApiru, traditionally worked as mercenaries. Unlike Amorites, the Suteans were not governed by a king. They may have been part of the Ahlamu. Hypotheses regarding their identity variously identify them as Arameans, proto-Arabs or a unique Semitic people.
Samalian was a Semitic language spoken and first attested in Samʼal.
Ancient Hebrew writings are texts written in Biblical Hebrew using the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.
Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples or Proto-Semitic people were speakers of Semitic languages who lived throughout the ancient Near East and North Africa, including the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula and Carthage from the 3rd millennium BC until the end of antiquity, with some, such as Arabs, Arameans, Assyrians, Jews, Mandaeans, and Samaritans having a continuum into the present day.
The Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, also known as Northwest Semitic inscriptions, are the primary extra-Biblical source for understanding of the societies and histories of the ancient Phoenicians, Hebrews and Arameans. Semitic inscriptions may occur on stone slabs, pottery ostraca, ornaments, and range from simple names to full texts. The older inscriptions form a Canaanite–Aramaic dialect continuum, exemplified by writings which scholars have struggled to fit into either category, such as the Stele of Zakkur and the Deir Alla Inscription.
