Old Aramaic

Old Aramaic is the earliest attested stage of the Aramaic language (c. 900–700 BCE), known from monumental inscriptions of Aramean kingdoms in Syria and Upper Mesopotamia — most famously the Tel Dan stele (mentioning the “House of David”), the Sefire treaties, and the Hadad and Panamuwa inscriptions of Sam’al. It preserves archaic Northwest Semitic features later lost in Imperial Aramaic, including remnants of internal passive vocalisation and an as-yet unreduced consonantal inventory. Written in a Phoenician-derived alphabet, Old Aramaic was the ancestor of every subsequent Aramaic variety and, via the Imperial Aramaic chancery script, of the Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Mongolian and Manchu writing systems.