Nabataean Aramaic

With the collapse of the Achaemenid Empire (330s BC), the Aramaic language increasingly lost importance as the lingua franca of the Near East. The Greek language now appeared beside it. The formerly-unified written culture fell apart into local schools, and the old dialects now also increased in importance as written languages.[3] Nabataean Aramaic was one of these local varieties. The language of the Nabataean inscriptions, attested from the 2nd century BC, is close to Achaemenid Official Aramaic,[4] but with local developments.[5] Of the few innovations compared to Imperial Aramaic, the use of the object marker yt is a Western Aramaic feature,[6] although the older form ʔyt already occurs in Old Aramaic.[7] But since Nabataean Aramaic does not participate in the innovations typical of Eastern Aramaic, it is commonly assigned to Western Aramaic.[8]

Tracings of Nabataean Aramaic inscriptions marking a tomb (kpr, top) and a sacred site (msgd, bottom) dated to the reigns of ḥrtt rḥm ʕmh (Aretas IV Philopatris) and mlkw (Malichus), respectively[9]

Evidence of Nabataean writings can be found in the burial and dedicatory inscriptions of the cities of Petra, Bosra and Hegra (Mada'in Salih). Many shorter inscriptions have been found in the southern Sinai Peninsula as well as other areas that were at one point ruled by the Nabataean kings. Several Nabataean texts written on papyrus were found at Nahal Hever.[10]

The oldest Nabataean inscription was found in Elusa, in the Negev. The inscription mentions "Aretas, king of the Nabataeans", interpreted by Joseph Naveh as Aretas I, an Arab ruler with whom the Jewish high priest Jason reputedly sought refuge in Petra in 169 BC.[11] This inscription lacks some of the Nabataean features and resembles uniform Imperial Aramaic and Jewish script.[11] Therefore, some scholars propose that the earliest Nabataean inscription is one found in Petra, Jordan, which can be dated back to the late Hellenistic era in the years 96 or 95 BC.[12]

Over 4,000 inscriptions have been confirmed to be written in Nabataean Aramaic.[12] The vast majority are engraved on stone, like the Aslah Triclinium inscription from Petra (95 BC), the dedication to the goddess al-Kutbay from Wadi Tumilat (77 BC) and the inscription of Rabbel I from Petra (66 BC).[13] The earliest inscription found to be written in a cursive Nabataean script was unearthed in Horvat Raqiq, close to the city of Beersheba, Israel. This inscription is unique not only because of its age, but also because it was written using ink applied on a large rock.[11] Similarly cursive texts written with ink on papyrus were found as part of the Babatha archive.[14] Some excavations have unearthed inscriptions on metallic objects. Most of such inscriptions were inscribed on metallic coins. Excavations in Wadi Musa in southern Jordan unearthed dozens of bronze fragments with Nabataean inscriptions on them, including a bronze oil burner which attests a well-preserved dedication by a priest and his son to Obodas.[13] This dates to the reign of the Nabataean king Rabbel II Soter, who ruled between the years 70 and 106 AD.

Funerary inscription in Nabataeo-Arabic characters from Al-Ula, 280 AD

From the period of its earliest attestation, Nabataean Aramaic is notable for the use of Arabic or Ancient North Arabian loanwords and grammar, reflecting strong contact with these languages.[2] A first- or second-century AD Nabataean inscription from Ein Avdat even contains three lines of Arabic poetry, of debated meaning.[15] From the third century onwards, the Nabataean script was increasingly used to write the Arabic language. Prominent examples include the mixed Aramaic-Arabic epitaph of RQWŠ daughter of ʕBDMWNTW (JSNab 17) and the entirely Arabic Namara inscription.

According to Jean Cantineau, this marked the beginning of the end of the widespread use of Nabataean Aramaic, which came to be replaced by Arabic. During this process, "Nabataean seems to have emptied itself little by little of the Aramaic elements it had and to have successively replaced them with Arabic loans".[16] This theory, while widely acknowledged, is contested. Michael O'Connor has questioned a number of alleged Arabic loanwords identified by Cantineau, stating that loanwords are largely restricted to technical terms.[17] More recently, Aaron Butts has argued that the use of Aramaic in the tomb inscriptions of Mada'in Salih reflects imperfect learning by native speakers of a North Arabian language.[2]

Nabataean Aramaic continued to be written for several centuries during this rise of Arabic written in the Nabataean script. The longer texts from this period mainly concern a few funerary inscriptions from North Arabian oasis towns. Based on the high number of Hebrew-derived names these contain, they may have been commissioned by members of local Jewish communities.[18] The latest Nabataean inscription found dates back to 356 AD. This was found in Mada'in Salih, in the north of what is now Saudi Arabia.[12][19][20] An even later graffito, dated to 455/6 AD and written in Nabataeo-Arabic characters, was discovered in 2004 at Jabal Umm Jadhayidh in north-western Saudi Arabia, but its Aramaic content is limited to stock formulas, the non-formulaic text being entirely Arabic.[21]

Museum exhibit of a "Sinaitic" graffito from Wadi Mukattab, Egypt

The existence of thousands of Nabataean graffiti in the Sinai desert, originally referred to as "Sinaitic", had long been known.[22] Based on Jean-Jacques Barthélemy's earlier decipherment of the related scripts of Palmyrene, Phoenician, and Imperial Aramaic as represented on the Carpentras Stele,[23] Eduard Friedrich Ferdinand Beer published his reading of the Nabataean script in 1840.[24]

Texts of various length continued to be discovered and published by European scholars during the 19th and 20th century. This period also saw the publication of Cantineau's grammar of Nabataean Aramaic[25] and lexicon with sample texts.[26] Important finds after this publication include the legal documents written on papyrus discovered in the Nahal Hever Cave of Letters in the 1960s.[14] Other publications containing a significant number of texts are the 1993 edition of the tomb inscriptions of Mada'in Saleh by J. Healey[27] and the collection of Nabatean Aramaic–Greek bilingual texts published by G. Petrantoni in 2021.[28] Newly discovered inscriptions continue to be published with great frequency.

Funerary inscription from Tayma, 203 AD. The inscription features the demonstrative dʔ (first word, top right), the relative particle dy (third line, middle left), and the pronominal suffixes (ʕl)hwy '(over) him' (fourth line, far right) and (ʔḥ)why 'his (brothers)' (fifth line, far right).[20]

The attested third person independent personal pronouns are masculine singular hw (rarely hwʔ), feminine singular hy, and masculine plural hm.[40] These also function as demonstrative pronouns. The legal documents found in the Dead Sea region also attest the first person singular ʔnh and second person masculine singular ʔnt.[41]

The first person plural suffixed pronoun is -nʔ. Unlike many other dialects of Aramaic which simply have -(a)n, Nabataean preserves the final vowel *-ā here, as indicated by the mater lectionis ʔ.[42] The third person masculine singular suffixed pronoun is normally -h. After long vowels and diphthongs (both marked by matres lectionis), -hy is used instead, as in ʔbwhy 'his father', ywmwhy 'his days'. In later graffiti, this distribution breaks down and other suffixes, -hw and -w, also appear.[43] The third person feminine singular suffixed pronoun is always -h and the third person plural (used both for masculine and feminine) is -hm.[44]

The most common demonstrative pronouns besides hw, hy, and hm are masculine singular dnh (rarely znh), feminine singular dʔ, and plural ʔlh. Other, rarely attested, plural forms are ʔlk and ʔnw. In the later period, the gender distinction in the singular breaks down and both forms occur with both masculine and feminine antecedents.[45] The relative particle is zy in the oldest inscriptions and dy elsewhere; it does not inflect. The relative particle introduces relative clauses, as in dʔ msgdʔ dy ʕbd ʕbydw 'this is the sacred stone which ʕBYDW made', and can express a genitive relation, as in dnʔ ṣlmʔ dy ʕbdt ʔlhʔ 'this is the statue of Obodas the god'.[46] Finally, the attested interrogative and indefinite pronouns are mn 'who' and mh 'what'.[47]

Like other Semitic languages, Nabataean Aramaic attests various (basic and derived) verb stems. Based on comparison with other varieties of Aramaic, it is likely that active verbs could occur as G-stems (basic stem), D-stems (intensive stem, characterized by different vowels and gemination of the second radical), or C-stems (causative stem, characterized by different vowels and a prefix). Due to the limitations of the Nabataean alphabet, the G- and D-stem are not distinguished in writing: cf. ʕbd 'he made' (G-stem), qrb 'he approached' (D-stem). The suffix conjugation (see below) of the C-stem is marked by a prefixed h-, as in hqym 'he erected', or ʔ-, as in ʔqymw 'they erected'; the prefix conjugation cannot be distinguished in writing from the G- or D-stem.[48]

Mediopassive stems are derived from the G- and D-stems. These are marked by a prefixed -t-; all the examples Cantineau mentions are prefix conjugation forms (see below), such as ytptḥ 'it will be opened' (tG-stem), ytʔlp 'he will compose for himself' (tD-stem). Unlike in some other kinds of Aramaic, verbs with a sibilant first radical prefix the -t- or infix it without voicing or emphatic assimilation: ytzbn and yztbn 'it will be sold'; these kinds of forms also occur in contemporary texts from the Dead Sea region, however.[49] The late form mqtry (for earlier mtqrʔ) 'called (m.sg.)' shows Arabic-like infixation of -t- after a non-sibilant first radical, although the form cannot have been borrowed from Arabic in its entirety.[50] A purely passive form is marked by a mater lectionis -y- between the second and third radical, as in dkyr 'remembered (be) (m.sg.)'. This is sometimes inflected as an adjective, as in dkyryn 'remembered (m.pl.)' but can also be inflected according to the suffix conjugation, as in ʕbydt 'it (f.) was made'.[51]

Two finite conjugations can be distinguished: the suffix conjugation, which exclusively marks its subject agreement through suffixation, and the prefix conjugation, which uses both suffixes and prefixes. Attested suffix conjugation endings include -t (third person feminine singular and second person masculine singular) and -w (third person plural for both genders); the third person masculine singular is unmarked. Examples include ʕbd 'he made', ʕbdt 'she made', ʕbdw 'they made', and qrʔt 'you (m.sg.) called'.[52] The subject markers for the third person prefix conjugation are y- (third person masculine singular), t- (third person feminine singular), and y-...-wn (third person (masculine?) plural), as in yʕbd 'he will make', tʕbd 'she will make', and yktbwn 'they will write'.[53] Besides these finite conjugations, Nabataean Aramaic verbs form an infinitive. The G-stem infinitive is formed with a prefixed m-, as in mktb 'to write'. The G-stem active participle does not have any special affixes and has a stem like rḥm 'loving (m.sg.)'. As noted above, the G-stem passive participle is formed like dkyr 'remembered (m.sg.)'. In late graffiti, the form mdk(w)r 'remembered (m.sg.)' also occurs, a pattern which is borrowed from Arabic. The participles (both active and passive) of the derived stems are formed by prefixing an m-, but examples are scarce.[54]

A Nabataean coin of Aretas IV Philopatris from c. 2 BC. The inscription reads ḥrtt mlk nbṭw šnt 5+1+1 'Aretas, king of Nabataea, Year 7'.[55] The nouns mlk 'king of' and šnt 'year (of)' are in the construct state.[56]

Nouns distinguish two genders, masculine and feminine; two numbers, singular and plural; and three states, absolute, construct, and emphatic. Feminine nouns may be marked by a feminine suffix (-h, -w, -y) or unmarked. The masculine is always unmarked.

Various endings express the combination of number and state.[57] The feminine suffix -h is replaced by -t in the construct state, which expresses possession by a following noun or suffixed pronoun. -t is also added in the construct state after the feminine suffixes -w and -y. In other words, the construct is identical to the absolute state in the singular. One set of plural endings consists of absolute -yn (rarely -n), construct -y (which changes to -w- before the suffix -hy), used for masculine and some feminine nouns. For other feminine nouns, the construct plural form is written the same as the construct singular form (although the plural was probably marked by a long ā vowel, as in -āt-, that was absent in the singular; this is not expressed in the writing); based on other varieties of Aramaic, the expected absolute suffix for these nouns is -n, but this is unattested. Finally, the emphatic state, expressing definiteness, is formed by adding the suffix -ʔ to the construct state. The full paradigm is thus (example forms are of mlk 'king' and mlkh 'queen'; not all forms are actually attested):

Frequent prepositions include b- 'in', l- 'to, for, of', k- 'according to', mn 'from', and ʕl 'on, about'. These can take pronominal suffixes, as in bh 'in it', lhm 'to them'. ʕl is inflected as a plural before suffixes, as in ʕlwhy over him, ʕlyhm 'over them'.[58]