#syriac — Public Fediverse posts

Marco Summer Language Program: 2026 courses held virtually via Zoom.
Three levels of medieval Latin classes: Beginner/Review Latin, Intermediate Readings in Medieval Latin, and Advanced Readings in Medieval Latin. Plus Beginner Syriac and Intermediate Syriac.
https://marco.utk.edu/summerlanguages/
#LanguageLearning #Latin #Syriac

The Pearlsong – Bibliographia Iranica
https://www.biblioiranica.info/the-pearlsong/
"The Pearlsong is an ancient poem that recounts the story of a Parthian prince sent by his parents on a mission to Egypt to retrieve a pearl from the clutches of a giant serpent...The poem was originally composed in #Syriac translated into Greek, and later paraphrased in Greek again in a homily. These three texts are all published here with a parallel English translation on facing pages..."

The Pearlsong – Bibliographia Iranica
https://www.biblioiranica.info/the-pearlsong/
"The Pearlsong is an ancient poem that recounts the story of a Parthian prince sent by his parents on a mission to Egypt to retrieve a pearl from the clutches of a giant serpent...The poem was originally composed in #Syriac translated into Greek, and later paraphrased in Greek again in a homily. These three texts are all published here with a parallel English translation on facing pages..."

Prochaine séance du séminaire Manuscrits en Méditerranée @irht_cnrs ce jeudi 2 avril, à 14h, Campus Condorcet et en ligne. Flavia Ruani et André Binggeli : Inventaires de bibliothèques syriaques : état des lieux et nouvelles découvertes
https://manuscrits.hypotheses.org/8638
#syriac #manuscripts #historyoflibraries

Oldest known star map attributed to Hipparchus discovered beneath #Syriac Manuscript
https://syriacpress.com/blog/2026/03/09/oldest-known-star-map-attributed-to-hipparchus-discovered-beneath-syriac-manuscript/

Oldest known star map attributed to Hipparchus discovered beneath #Syriac Manuscript
https://syriacpress.com/blog/2026/03/09/oldest-known-star-map-attributed-to-hipparchus-discovered-beneath-syriac-manuscript/

Prochaine séance du séminaire Manuscrits en Méditerranée au Campus Condorcet et en ligne, jeudi 12 mars, avec Margherita Farina : Les manuscrits syriaques du Seminario Arcivescovile Maggiore de Florence et un format particulier de manuscrits.
https://manuscrits.hypotheses.org/8536
#manuscripts #syriac

#CatchOfTheDay
#OpenAccess on
#MENAdoc:

"Grammatica Syriaca" by Adalbertus Merx

[Halis: Orphanotropheum, 1867-1870]

http://dx.doi.org/10.25673/98554

#syriac #grammar

I'm getting desperate so am turning to the Fedi for help. Boosts will be appreciated.

I really need to find a private tutor of East Syriac. I do know Classical Arabic which I've heard helps, but can't find any sources or courses.

@medievodons @histodons #Syriac #Academic #History #Medieval #Medievallanguages #language

I'm getting desperate so am turning to the Fedi for help. Boosts will be appreciated.

I really need to find a private tutor of East Syriac. I do know Classical Arabic which I've heard helps, but can't find any sources or courses.

@medievodons @histodons #Syriac #Academic #History #Medieval #Medievallanguages #language

CALL and DOT

Two conferences in the last three weeks: my first Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics (as a speaker), in Leiden as always, and a day and a half of the 35st Deutscher Orientalistentag, in Erlangen.

Both were a lot of fun. I saw many different talks at CALL, too many to summarize, and mostly too off-topic as well. I was there to ask why we think Cushitic forms a single family within Afroasiatic (see also these blog posts). Despite the purposefully provocative title of my talk, I was not assaulted by any angry mobs of Cushiticists.1 The main question seems to be whether we really should disregard the lexicon when looking at subclassification (and then the next question should be whether the lexicon does show that Cushitic is a clade). It was also really cool to see several talks by young researchers whom I taught as first-years and who have now all finished their MAs and partially started PhD projects: shout-outs to Nina van der Vlugt, Melle Groen, and Jeroen van Ravenhorst. Post your slides online, guys!

At the DOT, I co-chaired a panel on Semitic (in practice: mostly Hebrew) reading traditions together with Harald Samuel. While some of our presenters sadly had to cancel, we still had a great line-up, with exciting findings in every talk:

Chanan Ariel (Tel-Aviv University) proposed a highly original new explanation for the Biblical Hebrew phenomenon of dehiq, where consonants following certain unstressed vowels are geminated. According to Ariel, this is an orthoepic feature and applies to vocalic suffixes that alternate with zero, as well as some cases where the geminated consonant had to be kept apart from a following guttural. Works really well IMHO.

Aaron Hornkohl (University of Cambridge) provided a thorough discussion of the ketiv-qere phenomenon, presenting an up-to-date linguistic view of its origins and purpose in hopes of spreading more awareness of this to less linguistically inclined Hebrew Bible scholars. One thing that stood out to me is that words that are present in the consonantal text but left unpronounced in the reading tradition (ketiv wela qere) are sometimes translated in targums and other ancient versions.

Jonathan Howard (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) presented his ongoing PhD research on the “Palestinian” vocalization system of Hebrew and Aramaic and pointed out that so far, there’s really no good evidence that it’s from Palestine. He’s hoping to find some, but it might be more impactful if he doesn’t.

Johan Lundberg (University of Oxford) walked us through the increasing complexity in Syriac punctuation signs, including the development of something that is roughly equivalent to an exclamation mark! Cool fact: in at least one of the few Syriac manuscripts of the entire Bible, the scribe has simply maintained the punctuation of each source text, resulting in several different systems coexisting in the same final work.

Emmanuel Mastey (Tel-Aviv University) presented a nice statistical inquiry into h-final spellings of 2m.sg. perfect verbs in Biblical Hebrew. Besides the very frequent case of נָתַתָּה ‘you gave’, Mastey finds that this spelling is especially common with verbs that have t as their third radical and, less so, with third-weak verbs. He suggests a phonological explanation for both classes; I wonder whether with the III-t roots, it may rather be motivated by the usefulness of distinguishing e.g. שתה ‘you placed’ from שת ‘he placed’.

Isabella Maurizio (University of Lorraine according to the programme, but I think that may be outdated? Sorbonne soon from what she told me) presented her recently completed research on the Second Column of Origen’s Hexapla, the oldest fully vocalized source (in Greek script!) for Biblical Hebrew. Big shock to me: Maurizio dates the Secunda to the 2nd c. BCE-1st c. CE, not the 3rd c. CE!

Marijn van Putten (Leiden University) appeared virtually to frighten the Hebraists with the tricky history of the Qur’anic reading traditions, with examples like one where a certain reader’s Arabic is notably more archaic than that of his teacher’s teacher. Since we barely know anything about who transmitted the Hebrew reading traditions, how much of this stuff are we missing due to a lack of data?

Harald Samuel (University of Tübingen) continued the sceptical line by noting some features of Tiberian Hebrew that appear to be really late (quoting me[!] from an informal conversation in which I said that a certain change must have taken place “about two hours before Ben-Asher went to work that morning”). How do we reconcile this with the alleged presence of extremely early, First Temple period features in the reading tradition as well?

Christian Stadel (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) presented on some clearly late and some unquestionably early features of the Samaritan reading tradition and talked about how it relates to the consonantal text of the Samaritan Pentateuch more generally. It reminded me a bit of a presentation I gave on a similar topic several years ago. I only have one semester of Samaritan Hebrew, though—taught by Christian Stadel!—while Stadel is a real expert on the Samaritan languages. So it was reassuring to hear him argue for similar conclusions as well as present a whole lot more interesting data.

Last of all (due to alphabetization, but it worked out alright), I got to present on the project on the construction of the Biblical Aramaic reading tradition that I’ve been doing at Leuven since 2019. I’m not sure the argument I presented is fully sound, so it was great to be able to discuss it with some colleagues afterwards.

The Semitics section continued this morning. In her section keynote, Na’ama Pat-El (University of Texas Austin) presented her SemitiLEX project (recorded talk by another project member, haven’t watched it yet), looking at cognate Semitic lexemes not just in terms of roots, but also looking at morpho-lexical features like gender and pluralization. Unexpected result: building phylogenetic trees based on these data shows Akkadian, Ugaritic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic clustering as four or five separate branches, instead of Northwest Semitic clustering together and then being closer to Arabic than to Akkadian.

Maria Rauscher (Université Félix Houphouet-Boigny) presented her ongoing work on a dictionary of Arabic verbal nouns, focusing on the difficult case of k-r-h ‘to dislike’. As we had some extra discussion time for both Pat-El’s and Rauscher’s talks, there was time enough for the audience to draw up battle lines and get into the details of linguistic theory (such as: are morphemes even a thing?).

Stefanie Rudolf (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science) presented on two Qur’anic phrases that she suggests are unrecognized borrowings from Ethiosemitic. “The Lord of the East and the West” is attested in an Ethiopian Early Sabaic inscription, while Rudolf proposes the Arabic root f-t-w ‘to judge’ may be borrowed from Ethiosemitic f-t-ḥ. While she acknowledges the phonological difficulty of the last case, maybe we should reckon with the possibility of an unknown (South?) Ethiosemitic language that lost the pharyngeals acting as an intermediary: in the beginning of her talk, she pointed out that early Islamic sources refer to an Abyssinian with a name that is not Ge’ez but pre-Amharic (I think Ababut?), which I found very cool.

Jan Retsö (University of Gothenburg) pulled off the trick of reading out a text with no slides or handout while being perfectly easy to follow and entertaining. After an overview of the scholarship on Semitic–Ancient Egyptian cognates and loanwords, Retsö responded to Alexander Borg’s recent claim that there are lots of specifically Arabic loanwords in Egyptian. Retsö thinks there’s something there but urges for methodological precision.

Mohammad I. Ababneh (University of Halle) presented on some difficulties in Safaitic paleography, including merged letters and ligatures and other weird letter shapes. Nice to see some discussion of former Leiden colleague Chiara Della Puppa’s dissertation!

Finally, Vera Tsukanova (Philipps-Universität Marburg) took a look at the phonological adaptation of Persian loanwords into Arabic from a Semiticist and diachronic perspective. Historical differences in aspiration go a long way in accounting for prima facie unexpected sounds in borrowings.

And now, the conference is kind of on hold for various business meetings, which I took as my cue to leave. In conclusion, I would like to note that I am posting this from a high-speed train, which feels very futuristic. While some discussions in the field stay the same for what seems like forever—Paul Kahle’s lecture at the first DOT in 1922 was referenced multiple times—I take this as a sign that like Deutsche Bahn passengers, no matter the inevitable delays, detours, and frustrations, overall, we are getting somewhere.

1. Only by a toddler, possibly for unrelated reasons. ↩︎

#Akkadian #Amharic #Arabic #Aramaic #Beja #Bible #Cushitic #EastCushitic #Egyptian #Hebrew #linguistics #Samaritans #Syriac #Ugaritic

CALL and DOT

Two conferences in the last three weeks: my first Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics (as a speaker), in Leiden as always, and a day and a half of the 35st Deutscher Orientalistentag, in Erlangen.

Both were a lot of fun. I saw many different talks at CALL, too many to summarize, and mostly too off-topic as well. I was there to ask why we think Cushitic forms a single family within Afroasiatic (see also these blog posts). Despite the purposefully provocative title of my talk, I was not assaulted by any angry mobs of Cushiticists.1 The main question seems to be whether we really should disregard the lexicon when looking at subclassification (and then the next question should be whether the lexicon does show that Cushitic is a clade). It was also really cool to see several talks by young researchers whom I taught as first-years and who have now all finished their MAs and partially started PhD projects: shout-outs to Nina van der Vlugt, Melle Groen, and Jeroen van Ravenhorst. Post your slides online, guys!

At the DOT, I co-chaired a panel on Semitic (in practice: mostly Hebrew) reading traditions together with Harald Samuel. While some of our presenters sadly had to cancel, we still had a great line-up, with exciting findings in every talk:

Chanan Ariel (Tel-Aviv University) proposed a highly original new explanation for the Biblical Hebrew phenomenon of dehiq, where consonants following certain unstressed vowels are geminated. According to Ariel, this is an orthoepic feature and applies to vocalic suffixes that alternate with zero, as well as some cases where the geminated consonant had to be kept apart from a following guttural. Works really well IMHO.

Aaron Hornkohl (University of Cambridge) provided a thorough discussion of the ketiv-qere phenomenon, presenting an up-to-date linguistic view of its origins and purpose in hopes of spreading more awareness of this to less linguistically inclined Hebrew Bible scholars. One thing that stood out to me is that words that are present in the consonantal text but left unpronounced in the reading tradition (ketiv wela qere) are sometimes translated in targums and other ancient versions.

Jonathan Howard (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) presented his ongoing PhD research on the “Palestinian” vocalization system of Hebrew and Aramaic and pointed out that so far, there’s really no good evidence that it’s from Palestine. He’s hoping to find some, but it might be more impactful if he doesn’t.

Johan Lundberg (University of Oxford) walked us through the increasing complexity in Syriac punctuation signs, including the development of something that is roughly equivalent to an exclamation mark! Cool fact: in at least one of the few Syriac manuscripts of the entire Bible, the scribe has simply maintained the punctuation of each source text, resulting in several different systems coexisting in the same final work.

Emmanuel Mastey (Tel-Aviv University) presented a nice statistical inquiry into h-final spellings of 2m.sg. perfect verbs in Biblical Hebrew. Besides the very frequent case of נָתַתָּה ‘you gave’, Mastey finds that this spelling is especially common with verbs that have t as their third radical and, less so, with third-weak verbs. He suggests a phonological explanation for both classes; I wonder whether with the III-t roots, it may rather be motivated by the usefulness of distinguishing e.g. שתה ‘you placed’ from שת ‘he placed’.

Isabella Maurizio (University of Lorraine according to the programme, but I think that may be outdated? Sorbonne soon from what she told me) presented her recently completed research on the Second Column of Origen’s Hexapla, the oldest fully vocalized source (in Greek script!) for Biblical Hebrew. Big shock to me: Maurizio dates the Secunda to the 2nd c. BCE-1st c. CE, not the 3rd c. CE!

Marijn van Putten (Leiden University) appeared virtually to frighten the Hebraists with the tricky history of the Qur’anic reading traditions, with examples like one where a certain reader’s Arabic is notably more archaic than that of his teacher’s teacher. Since we barely know anything about who transmitted the Hebrew reading traditions, how much of this stuff are we missing due to a lack of data?

Harald Samuel (University of Tübingen) continued the sceptical line by noting some features of Tiberian Hebrew that appear to be really late (quoting me[!] from an informal conversation in which I said that a certain change must have taken place “about two hours before Ben-Asher went to work that morning”). How do we reconcile this with the alleged presence of extremely early, First Temple period features in the reading tradition as well?

Christian Stadel (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) presented on some clearly late and some unquestionably early features of the Samaritan reading tradition and talked about how it relates to the consonantal text of the Samaritan Pentateuch more generally. It reminded me a bit of a presentation I gave on a similar topic several years ago. I only have one semester of Samaritan Hebrew, though—taught by Christian Stadel!—while Stadel is a real expert on the Samaritan languages. So it was reassuring to hear him argue for similar conclusions as well as present a whole lot more interesting data.

Last of all (due to alphabetization, but it worked out alright), I got to present on the project on the construction of the Biblical Aramaic reading tradition that I’ve been doing at Leuven since 2019. I’m not sure the argument I presented is fully sound, so it was great to be able to discuss it with some colleagues afterwards.

The Semitics section continued this morning. In her section keynote, Na’ama Pat-El (University of Texas Austin) presented her SemitiLEX project (recorded talk by another project member, haven’t watched it yet), looking at cognate Semitic lexemes not just in terms of roots, but also looking at morpho-lexical features like gender and pluralization. Unexpected result: building phylogenetic trees based on these data shows Akkadian, Ugaritic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic clustering as four or five separate branches, instead of Northwest Semitic clustering together and then being closer to Arabic than to Akkadian.

Maria Rauscher (Université Félix Houphouet-Boigny) presented her ongoing work on a dictionary of Arabic verbal nouns, focusing on the difficult case of k-r-h ‘to dislike’. As we had some extra discussion time for both Pat-El’s and Rauscher’s talks, there was time enough for the audience to draw up battle lines and get into the details of linguistic theory (such as: are morphemes even a thing?).

Stefanie Rudolf (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science) presented on two Qur’anic phrases that she suggests are unrecognized borrowings from Ethiosemitic. “The Lord of the East and the West” is attested in an Ethiopian Early Sabaic inscription, while Rudolf proposes the Arabic root f-t-w ‘to judge’ may be borrowed from Ethiosemitic f-t-ḥ. While she acknowledges the phonological difficulty of the last case, maybe we should reckon with the possibility of an unknown (South?) Ethiosemitic language that lost the pharyngeals acting as an intermediary: in the beginning of her talk, she pointed out that early Islamic sources refer to an Abyssinian with a name that is not Ge’ez but pre-Amharic (I think Ababut?), which I found very cool.

Jan Retsö (University of Gothenburg) pulled off the trick of reading out a text with no slides or handout while being perfectly easy to follow and entertaining. After an overview of the scholarship on Semitic–Ancient Egyptian cognates and loanwords, Retsö responded to Alexander Borg’s recent claim that there are lots of specifically Arabic loanwords in Egyptian. Retsö thinks there’s something there but urges for methodological precision.

Mohammad I. Ababneh (University of Halle) presented on some difficulties in Safaitic paleography, including merged letters and ligatures and other weird letter shapes. Nice to see some discussion of former Leiden colleague Chiara Della Puppa’s dissertation!

Finally, Vera Tsukanova (Philipps-Universität Marburg) took a look at the phonological adaptation of Persian loanwords into Arabic from a Semiticist and diachronic perspective. Historical differences in aspiration go a long way in accounting for prima facie unexpected sounds in borrowings.

And now, the conference is kind of on hold for various business meetings, which I took as my cue to leave. In conclusion, I would like to note that I am posting this from a high-speed train, which feels very futuristic. While some discussions in the field stay the same for what seems like forever—Paul Kahle’s lecture at the first DOT in 1922 1921 was referenced multiple times—I take this as a sign that like Deutsche Bahn passengers, no matter the inevitable delays, detours, and frustrations, overall, we are getting somewhere.

1. Only by a toddler, possibly for unrelated reasons. ↩︎

#Akkadian #Amharic #Arabic #Aramaic #Beja #Bible #Cushitic #EastCushitic #Egyptian #Hebrew #linguistics #Samaritans #Syriac #Ugaritic

‘Woman’ in Modern South Arabian, Amorite, and Ugaritic

Some Modern South Arabian languages have a weird-looking word for ‘woman’: Mehri tēθ, Harsusi and Jibbali teθ. The θ makes it look similar to Proto-Semitic *ʔanθ–at-, which underlies Ugaritic a͗θt, Hebrew ʔiššā, Syriac <ʔntt-ʔ> at-o, Akkadian aššat- ‘wife’, etc. The same root also gives Arabic ʔunθ-ay– ‘female’1. But what about that initial t-?

For years, I’ve kind of assumed the Modern South Arabian words also come from something like *ʔanθ–at-, with the first part being lost and *θ-et then metathesizing to *teθ. It’s weird, but it was my best guess. But here’s a new guess I like better.

In late 2022 (paywalled), Andrew George and Manfred Krebernik published what they aptly referred to as “two remarkable vocabularies”, containing what is probably the first known connected text in Amorite, a Northwest Semitic language of the early second millennium BCE. One of the many surprises these texts contain is the word for ‘woman’ (unambiguously written with a Sumerogram in the Akkadian translation), ta-aḫ-ni-šum. Based on comparisons to the Semitic words above and known Amorite/Akkadian spelling conventions, this looks like *taʔnīθ-um, yet another different noun formation from the *ʔ-n-θ root. As I learned from a recent handout byTania Notarius, Ugaritic also attests a form that looks related: ti͗nθt ‘women’, ‘females’, plausibly /tiʔnīθ-āt-u/.

Both of these forms show a t- prefix, part of a pattern that usually forms abstracts—although concrete nouns in this pattern also occur, like Hebrew < Aramaic talmīḏ– ‘student’. And the Amorite, at least, lacks a feminine suffix. So that’s starting to look like our MSAL *teθ. Could this be a full cognate, with *teθ coming from *taʔnīθ-?

That depends on whether we can get rid of the first two radicals, *ʔ and *n. As far as I know, Proto-Semitic *ʔ was regularly lost on the way to Modern South Arabian. So that’s fine. What about *n, is this one of the (surprisingly) many branches of Semitic where it assimilates to following consonants? Let’s check out some likely etyma with *n before a consonant:

• PS *ʔanta ‘you (m.sg.)’ > Mehri, Harsusi hēt, Jibbali hɛt (if this is the right etymon)
• PS *ʔantum ‘you (m.pl.)’ > Mehri ətēm, Harsusi etōm, Jibbali tum, Soqotri ten
• PS *ʕVnz- ‘she-goat’ > Mehri, Harsusi wōz, Jibbali oz, Soqotri o’oz (? but then where did the *ʕ go? [update])

That’s all I’ve got, for now. The plural pronoun looks good, though. Of course, in *taʔnīθ-, the *n isn’t directly before the θ, so why should it assimilate? After assigning the stress to the first *a—a strange, but reliable rule in pre-MSAL—we could imagine something like
*táʔnīθ > *táʔnəθ (vowel reduction) >
*táʔənθ (metathesis) >
*táʔəθθ (assimilation) >
*teθθ (loss of the glottal stop, vowel contraction, MSAL vowel weirdness)
*teθ (degemination—not entirely clear whether this is regular).

Writing it out like that, the non-gemination of the θ (also word-internally, as in the Mehri dual tēθ–i) may also be a problem for assuming a derivation from the *ʔ-n-θ root.2 Still, this is commonly assumed; supporting evidence comes from the plural forms, like Mehri yənīθ, where the n is visible. So, since the t- in *teθ really does look like a prefix, I think Amorite *taʔnīθ- is an exciting form to compare.

1. And apparently “in the dual, obsolete” (Wiktionary), ‘testicles’. ↩︎
2. Or maybe it isn’t; none of the other potential examples of *n-assimilation yield geminates. Either way, reflexes of the *n are partially missing in some other languages where it should yield a geminate: Hebrew ʔḗšeṯ ‘wife of’ < *ʔiθ-t-, Akkadian alt- ‘wife’ < *ʔaθ-t-. I assume these are language-internal, ad hoc simplifications of the geminate, maybe triggered by the lack of stress in the frequent construct and pronominally possessed forms or by the creation of a pre-consonantal geminate when the short *-t- form of the feminine suffix was used. Perhaps that’s also what happened in MSAL, something like *teθθ–k ‘your wife’ > *teθ–k, with generalization of the *teθ base. ↩︎

#Akkadian #Amorite #Arabic #Hebrew #linguistics #ModernSouthArabian #ProtoSemitic #Syriac #Ugaritic

‘Woman’ in Modern South Arabian, Amorite, and Ugaritic

EDIT: Roey Schneider reminds me he probably suggested this idea to me back in 2023! No plagiarism intended.

Some Modern South Arabian languages have a weird-looking word for ‘woman’: Mehri tēθ, Harsusi and Jibbali teθ. The θ makes it look similar to Proto-Semitic *ʔanθ–at-, which underlies Ugaritic a͗θt, Hebrew ʔiššā, Syriac <ʔntt-ʔ> at-o, Akkadian aššat- ‘wife’, etc. The same root also gives Arabic ʔunθ-ay– ‘female’1. But what about that initial t-?

For years, I’ve kind of assumed the Modern South Arabian words also come from something like *ʔanθ–at-, with the first part being lost and *θ-et then metathesizing to *teθ. It’s weird, but it was my best guess. But here’s a new guess I like better.

In late 2022 (paywalled), Andrew George and Manfred Krebernik published what they aptly referred to as “two remarkable vocabularies”, containing what is probably the first known connected text in Amorite, a Northwest Semitic language of the early second millennium BCE. One of the many surprises these texts contain is the word for ‘woman’ (unambiguously written with a Sumerogram in the Akkadian translation), ta-aḫ-ni-šum. Based on comparisons to the Semitic words above and known Amorite/Akkadian spelling conventions, this looks like *taʔnīθ-um, yet another different noun formation from the *ʔ-n-θ root. As I learned from a recent handout byTania Notarius, Ugaritic also attests a form that looks related: ti͗nθt ‘women’, ‘females’, plausibly /tiʔnīθ-āt-u/.

Both of these forms show a t- prefix, part of a pattern that usually forms abstracts—although concrete nouns in this pattern also occur, like Hebrew < Aramaic talmīḏ– ‘student’. And the Amorite, at least, lacks a feminine suffix. So that’s starting to look like our MSAL *teθ. Could this be a full cognate, with *teθ coming from *taʔnīθ-?

That depends on whether we can get rid of the first two radicals, *ʔ and *n. As far as I know, Proto-Semitic *ʔ was regularly lost on the way to Modern South Arabian. So that’s fine. What about *n, is this one of the (surprisingly) many branches of Semitic where it assimilates to following consonants? Let’s check out some likely etyma with *n before a consonant:

• PS *ʔanta ‘you (m.sg.)’ > Mehri, Harsusi hēt, Jibbali hɛt (if this is the right etymon)
• PS *ʔantum ‘you (m.pl.)’ > Mehri ətēm, Harsusi etōm, Jibbali tum, Soqotri ten
• PS *ʕVnz- ‘she-goat’ > Mehri, Harsusi wōz, Jibbali oz, Soqotri o’oz (? but then where did the *ʕ go? [update])

That’s all I’ve got, for now. The plural pronoun looks good, though. Of course, in *taʔnīθ-, the *n isn’t directly before the θ, so why should it assimilate? After assigning the stress to the first *a—a strange, but reliable rule in pre-MSAL—we could imagine something like
*táʔnīθ > *táʔnəθ (vowel reduction) >
*táʔənθ (metathesis) >
*táʔəθθ (assimilation) >
*teθθ (loss of the glottal stop, vowel contraction, MSAL vowel weirdness)
*teθ (degemination—not entirely clear whether this is regular).

Writing it out like that, the non-gemination of the θ (also word-internally, as in the Mehri dual tēθ–i) may also be a problem for assuming a derivation from the *ʔ-n-θ root.2 Still, this is commonly assumed; supporting evidence comes from the plural forms, like Mehri yənīθ, where the n is visible. So, since the t- in *teθ really does look like a prefix, I think Amorite *taʔnīθ- is an exciting form to compare.

1. And apparently “in the dual, obsolete” (Wiktionary), ‘testicles’. ↩︎
2. Or maybe it isn’t; none of the other potential examples of *n-assimilation yield geminates. Either way, reflexes of the *n are partially missing in some other languages where it should yield a geminate: Hebrew ʔḗšeṯ ‘wife of’ < *ʔiθ-t-, Akkadian alt- ‘wife’ < *ʔaθ-t-. I assume these are language-internal, ad hoc simplifications of the geminate, maybe triggered by the lack of stress in the frequent construct and pronominally possessed forms or by the creation of a pre-consonantal geminate when the short *-t- form of the feminine suffix was used. Perhaps that’s also what happened in MSAL, something like *teθθ–k ‘your wife’ > *teθ–k, with generalization of the *teθ base. ↩︎

#Akkadian #Amorite #Arabic #Hebrew #linguistics #ModernSouthArabian #ProtoSemitic #Syriac #Ugaritic

#CatchOfTheDay
#OpenAccess on
#MENAdoc:

"Horae Syriacae Seu Commentationes Et Anecdota Res Vel Litteras Syriacas Spectantia" by Nicholas Patrick Wiseman

[Romae: Bourlié, 1828]

dx.doi.org/10.25673/98944

#Syriac

**Material philology and Syriac excerpting practices: A computational-quantitative study of the digitized catalog of the Syriac manuscripts in the British Library**

“_The results reveal that most manuscripts contain fewer than 20 excerpts, but a small number show much higher levels of excerpting, highlighting the immense intellectual and literary activities implicated in their production._”

Maeir N (2025) Material philology and Syriac excerpting practices: A computational-quantitative study of the digitized catalog of the Syriac manuscripts in the British Library. PLOS ONE 20(3): e0320265. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320265.

#OpenAccess #OA #Research #Article #Culture #Charts #Religion #Taxonomy #Christianity #Analysis #Philology #Syriac #Academia

**Material philology and Syriac excerpting practices: A computational-quantitative study of the digitized catalog of the Syriac manuscripts in the British Library**

“_The results reveal that most manuscripts contain fewer than 20 excerpts, but a small number show much higher levels of excerpting, highlighting the immense intellectual and literary activities implicated in their production._”

Maeir N (2025) Material philology and Syriac excerpting practices: A computational-quantitative study of the digitized catalog of the Syriac manuscripts in the British Library. PLOS ONE 20(3): e0320265. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320265.

#OpenAccess #OA #Research #Article #Culture #Charts #Religion #Taxonomy #Christianity #Analysis #Philology #Syriac #Academia

Material philology and #Syriac excerpting practices: A computational-quantitative study of the digitized catalog of the Syriac manuscripts in the British Library | PLOS One
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0320265

Material philology and #Syriac excerpting practices: A computational-quantitative study of the digitized catalog of the Syriac manuscripts in the British Library | PLOS One
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0320265

On the occasion of tomorrow's #nowruz the New Year and spring festival, which is celebrated mainly in the Persian cultural area, we would like to draw your attention to this #manuscript from 1850.
It contains a Kurdish poem of praise in #Syriac characters.

#CatchOfTheDay
#OpenAccess on
#MENAdoc

https://opendata.uni-halle.de//handle/1981185920/120523

#happynowruz

@mariam_al_masri_author @bookstodon

#Syriac is referenced extensively in the chapter.

@mariam_al_masri_author @bookstodon

#Syriac is referenced extensively in the chapter.

Goosebumps. Discovering the work of Ghada Shbeir. She speaks to my mediterranean identity like no other artist.

#mediterranean #ocean #chantspolyphonique #GhadaShbeir #arabicmusic #maqam #spiritual #syriac #classicalmusic

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mPjrpbHXVQl5Cx2v6ki95-l6IK6RVrq1c&si=NyJEhXV5EXzhm02n

Prochaine séance du séminaire Manuscrits en Méditerranée ce jeudi 7 novembre, 14h, avec François Pacha Miran : Le Caire, Chypre, Jérusalem : création et circulation des manuscrits enluminés à l’Occident du monde syriaque
@campuscondorcet et accessible en ligne également
@IRHT_CNRS @bookhistodons
#manuscripts #syriac
https://manuscrits.hypotheses.org/6971

Prochaine séance du séminaire Manuscrits en Méditerranée ce jeudi 7 novembre, 14h, avec François Pacha Miran : Le Caire, Chypre, Jérusalem : création et circulation des manuscrits enluminés à l’Occident du monde syriaque
@campuscondorcet et accessible en ligne également
@IRHT_CNRS @bookhistodons
#manuscripts #syriac
https://manuscrits.hypotheses.org/6971

If anyone within the echo of this knows #Syriac, and wants to tell me what this MS is

https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.sir.659

I'd love to be able to add at least a title to the listing

If anyone within the echo of this knows #Syriac, and wants to tell me what this MS is

https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.sir.659

I'd love to be able to add at least a title to the listing

The Mongol conqueror #Genghis Khan's grandson Hulegu captured #Baghdad and ended the Abbasid #caliphate in the city in 1258.

I just read a text that asserts that around 25 years later, the Muslim vizier Shams al-Din Juvayni was involved in a plot to restore the caliphate, but he was put to death when Hulegu's grandson Arghun overthrew his uncle Teguder Ahmad. This is probably just slander, but it is surprising slander in a #Syriac text written in the late 1310s!

I'm (re)reading the History of Mar Yahballaha and Rabban Sawma.

#IslamicHistory #MongolEmpire

The Mongol conqueror #Genghis Khan's grandson Hulegu captured #Baghdad and ended the Abbasid #caliphate in the city in 1258.

I just read a text that asserts that around 25 years later, the Muslim vizier Shams al-Din Juvayni was involved in a plot to restore the caliphate, but he was put to death when Hulegu's grandson Arghun overthrew his uncle Teguder Ahmad. This is probably just slander, but it is surprising slander in a #Syriac text written in the late 1310s!

I'm (re)reading the History of Mar Yahballaha and Rabban Sawma.

#IslamicHistory #MongolEmpire

Vulg in English: And Tobiyah & Sanballat had hired him. For he received a price, that I might be terrified

#Syriac Pesh has a longer reading, with the redundancy:
ܛܘܒܝܐ ܘܣܡܒܠܝܛ ܘܚܒܪ̈ܘܗܝ܂ ܐܓܪܘ ܘܫܕܪܘܗܝ ܥܠܝ ܠܡܩܛܠܢܝ ܡܛܠ ܕܐܓܝܪܐ ܗܘ܂ ܡܛܠ ܕܐܕܚܠ
Tobiya, Sanballat, *and his companions* hired *and sent* him *against me to kill me*, so that he was hired so that I would fear
2/?
#HebrewBible

A #Syriac technical glitch turned riddle:

What happened here?

A #Syriac technical glitch turned riddle:

What happened here?

Also important, no source for this section refers to God as anything other than "God" (#Hebrew אלהים, #Greek Θεός, #Syriac ܐܠܗܐ, #Latin Deus).

All of this changes once we move into Genesis 2:4ff. Of the 34 references to God in Genesis 2:4-4:26, only 17 achieve unanimity (barring Vulg omissions), only 50%, and sometimes which name is used for God is different. In 2:4-22, where MT has "LORD God," OG only has "God" (except 2:4, 15-18).

3/?
#HebrewBible #TextualCriticism

Pesh: ܘܛܠܝܐ ܛܠܐ ܗܘܐ܂

But in 1 Samuel 1:24(-25) the OG preserves a much larger reading: καὶ τὸ παιδάριον μετ᾿ αὐτῶν. καὶ προσήγαγον ἐνώπιον Κυρίου, καὶ ἔσφαξεν ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ τὴν θυσίαν, ἣν ἐποίει ἐξ ἡμερῶν εἰς ἡμέρας τῷ Κυρίῳ, καὶ προσήγαγε τὸ παιδάριον ("and the child was with them. And they approached before the Lord, and his father slaughtered the sacrifice which he was making from tine to time to the Lord, and he brought forward the child.")

4/? #Syriac #Greek #Bible

A New (Double Palimpsest) Witness to the Old #Syriac Gospels (Vat. iber. 4, ff. 1 & 5) | New Testament Studies | Cambridge Core
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/new-double-palimpsest-witness-to-the-old-syriac-gospels-vat-iber-4-ff-1-5/0DBE3923810C204EB39118267EB41614
"Vat. iber. 4...contains on 2 of its folios the Syriac Gospel text as the lowest layer...within a double palimpsest. Comparison with known Syriac versions...shows that the text...is particularly akin to the Curetonianus (Syc). On palaeographic grounds, the original Gospel manuscript can be dated to the first half of the 6th century."

A New (Double Palimpsest) Witness to the Old #Syriac Gospels (Vat. iber. 4, ff. 1 & 5) | New Testament Studies | Cambridge Core
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/new-double-palimpsest-witness-to-the-old-syriac-gospels-vat-iber-4-ff-1-5/0DBE3923810C204EB39118267EB41614
"Vat. iber. 4...contains on 2 of its folios the Syriac Gospel text as the lowest layer...within a double palimpsest. Comparison with known Syriac versions...shows that the text...is particularly akin to the Curetonianus (Syc). On palaeographic grounds, the original Gospel manuscript can be dated to the first half of the 6th century."

Dear specialists in #rtl (#syriac, #hebrew, #arabic) #html #xml (using #ceteicean) publishing. We have a problem with interpunction in rtl context. U+002E FULL STOP is in the wrong position on our website, only if and when the syriac text is interrupted by a xml/html tag. Any ideas? We've already checked https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-unicode-controls...

Dear specialists in #rtl (#syriac, #hebrew, #arabic) #html #xml (using #ceteicean) publishing. We have a problem with interpunction in rtl context. U+002E FULL STOP is in the wrong position on our website, only if and when the syriac text is interrupted by a xml/html tag. Any ideas? We've already checked https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-unicode-controls...

PaleoJudaica.com: Heal on Genesis 37 and 39 in the Early #Syriac Tradition
https://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/2024/03/heal-on-genesis-37-and-39-in-early.html

PaleoJudaica.com: Heal on Genesis 37 and 39 in the Early #Syriac Tradition
https://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/2024/03/heal-on-genesis-37-and-39-in-early.html

In #Syriac #Christianity, the story of Helena finding the Cross was "improved" by the invention of Protonike ("first victory"!), a fictional wife of Emperor Claudius in the first century, who converted in response to Peter's preaching in Rome, traveled to Jerusalem for a tour by James, the brother of Jesus, and found the "True Cross" (which was again lost subsequently, somehow).

#WomensHistoryMonth
11/?

In #Syriac #Christianity, the story of Helena finding the Cross was "improved" by the invention of Protonike ("first victory"!), a fictional wife of Emperor Claudius in the first century, who converted in response to Peter's preaching in Rome, traveled to Jerusalem for a tour by James, the brother of Jesus, and found the "True Cross" (which was again lost subsequently, somehow).

#WomensHistoryMonth
11/?

@jedwardwalters might want to hashtag to find more helpers...

#Greek #Syriac #AncientHistory #History #manuscripts

@jedwardwalters might want to hashtag to find more helpers...

#Greek #Syriac #AncientHistory #History #manuscripts

I always find it a bit jarring to read about Israel/Palestine in the “Byzantine” period. To my mind, Byzantine has strong medieval connotations, a time when the region fell under various Muslim and Crusader states. Hence, I’d be more inclined to talk about the Eastern Roman period. But given the continuity from the Roman Empire to the Eastern Roman Empire to the Byzantine Empire (which never called itself the Byzantine Empire), can we ever hope to draw a sharp line between (Eastern) Roman and Byzantine?

As a non-historian, I’m here to tell you: yes.

Unburdened by too much relevant knowledge, it seems to me that there are at least two big differences between the Late Antique Eastern Roman Empire and the Early Medieval Byzantine Empire.

First, the Byzantine Empire is unapologetically Greek, while Latin titles and the Latin language still played some role in the Eastern Roman Empire (although Greek was certainly dominant).

And second, the map of the Empire goes from something like this:

To something like this:

Except for some short-lived (re)conquests under Justinian I, the big difference is the loss of Egypt and North Africa, the Levant, and much of Armenia to the Islamic conquests.

This also changed the religious make-up of the Empire, as large segments of the Christian population of the lost areas (Copts, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox) followed a form of Miaphysitism (Christ has one nature) as opposed to the official Roman state religion at that time of Chalcedonian Christianity, the forerunner of Eastern Orthodoxy as well as Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

Happily, both developments can be associated with one and the same emperor: Heraclius (r. 610–641 CE). After fighting a devastating war against the Sasanian Persians, Heraclius’ empire suffered a series of crushing defeats to the early Caliphate, the first engagement taking place in 629.

And in the very same year, Heraclius first styled himself as basileus, the title used by Greek and Hellenistic rulers before the Romans and by all Byzantine rulers afterwards, without using other titles that were inherited from the earlier Roman period: kaisar (Latin: Caesar), augoustos or sebastos (Latin: Augustus) and autokratōr (Latin: Imperator).1 This makes for a nice cut-off point for the total dominance of Greek, even though the Latin titles remained in use for some time afterwards.

A couple of unrelated developments similarly co-occurred under one emperor some 250 years earlier. Theodosius I was the last emperor to hold sway over the whole Roman Empire: after his death in 395 CE, the empire was split into East and West, each half being ruled by one of his sons. Administratieve divisions like this had taken place before, but this one was to be permanent and is commonly taken as the beginning of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Theodosius’ reign also saw an important event in religious history. In 325, the Council of Nicaea had formulated what would become the orthodox doctrine concerning the Trinity. After decades of ongoing struggle with non-Nicene forms of Christianity and holdovers of pre-Christian Roman religions, an edict by Theodosius established this Nicene Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380. From that point on, it would play a paramount role, both in the West, where it contrasted with the non-Nicene Arian Christianity of most invading Germanic peoples, and in the East, where subsequent debates over the nature(s) of Christ would lead to schisms between the Church of the East, the Miaphysite churches, and what would become the Chalcedonian church.

So at two points in time, we have a few political and religious developments going hand in hand. Together, they lend a distinct flavour to these different periods in the history of the Roman Empire(s). Of course, there are several ways to further split up the periodization of the Roman Empire (e.g. before and after the third century) and the Byzantine Empire (pre- and post-Seljuks seems like a big distinction). But as for the Eastern Roman Empire, I think this gives us a pretty well-defined beginning and end point:

So: “Eastern Roman synagogues”, “Aramaic dialects of the Eastern Roman period”, “Hebrew poetry of Eastern Roman Palestine”… Who’s with me?

1. Wikipedia tells me that Heraclius first used basileus together with autokratōr kaisar in a letter from 628, with the more traditional titles first being left out in one from 629. ↩︎

https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2024/03/12/eastern-roman-vs-byzantine/

#Greek #history #Latin #Syriac

New publication from your Philological Essayist! First longer translation from Syriac. Second part of the first sermon of the Book of Steps will be translated in a next publication on the same Substack channel! #Syriac #Philology #Christianity #Translation https://open.substack.com/pub/philologicaltryouts/p/step-by-step-through-the-book-of?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=kir9a

Syriac Mystics of Eastern Christianity - The Spiritual School of Saint Thomas (Gospel of Thomas) - Spiritual Awakening Radio Podcast Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Substack, etc...: https://santmatradhasoami.blogspot.com/2024/02/syriac-mystics-of-eastern-christianity.html

#SpiritualAwakeningRadio #syriac #Mystics #Gnosticism #Mysticism #ChristianMystics #ChristianMysticism #gospelofthomas #spiritualpodcast #Spiritualityodcast #spirituality #gnosticgospels #easternchristianity #naghammadilibrary #applepodcasts #spotify #spotifypodcasts

Syriac Mystics of Eastern Christianity - The Spiritual School of Saint Thomas (Gospel of Thomas) - Spiritual Awakening Radio Podcast Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Substack, etc...: https://santmatradhasoami.blogspot.com/2024/02/syriac-mystics-of-eastern-christianity.html

#SpiritualAwakeningRadio #syriac #Mystics #Gnosticism #Mysticism #ChristianMystics #ChristianMysticism #gospelofthomas #spiritualpodcast #Spiritualityodcast #spirituality #gnosticgospels #easternchristianity #naghammadilibrary #applepodcasts #spotify #spotifypodcasts

PaleoJudaica.com: ... New Trajectories in Syriac Studies (Brock Festschrift) (Brill)
https://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/2023/10/new-trajectories-in-syriac-studies.html
No one mentions #Syriac, – a dialect of the Aramaic language Jesus spoke –, without referring to Sebastian P. Brock, the Oxford scholar and teacher who has written and taught about everything Syriac, even reorienting the field as The Third Lung of early Christianity (along with Greek and Latin).

The challenges of intellectual history in a manuscript age:

There is a section in the magnum opus of #Shbadnaya where he uses a LOT of #Greek words (in #Syriac script), (almost?) all derived from the 10th C dictionary of Bar Bahlul. But one word stumped me until this morning. The line reads:
ܗܲܟ̣ܣܹܐܓܗܲܪܬ̇ܝܼܛ ܐܲܢܘܿ ܕܲܟ̇ܣܘܿܣ ܐܸܣܛܘܿܒܵܢܵܝ
with glosses on each word (read #rtl ):
(1) ܐܬܬܥܝܪ
(2) ܐܘ
(3) ܡܫܒܚܐ
(4) ܘܡܝܬܪܐ

Reading the glosses, it is possible to get a sense of the intended meaning: "Arise, oh glorified and virtuous one!" (evidently an invocation of God).

The first word is everything except the last letter in the Greek imperative ἐξεγέρθητι.

The 2nd word looks a LOT like Greek ἄνω ("upward"), and is even glossed as that (ܠܥܠ) in Bar Bahlul's dictionary. I spent years (off-and-on) trying to figure out what Greek that sounds like that could be a vocative "oh!"

The 3rd word is also a puzzler: "daksos" is clearly related to Greek δόξα, but there is no Greek word δόξος.

1/x

One of the things I did not expect when I started editing this #medieval #Syriac text (#Shbadnaya 's magnum opus) was catching places where he must have misinterpreted his own source(s). He never cites Bar Bahlul, but he uses hundreds of glosses from Bar Bahlul's dictionary, so it's one of his most important sources.

Today again I tried to explain a word in Shbadnaya's work which is not in any dictionary (ܡܦ̈ܘܫܐ), and the closest I can find anywhere is in Bar Bahlul's definition of "luminary" (ܡܲܢܗܪܢܐ), where he gives as synonyms ܐܡܦܘܡܐ and ܐܡܦܘܫܐ (a near match, with an extra letter in front). Bar Bahlul then defines it as "which gives light to the house and is called al-rawzana" (ܕܡܲܢܗܪ ܠܒܝܬܐ ܘܡܬܩܪܐ الرَوزَنة). The last word is #Persian and means "window," but Shbadnaya seems to be referring to a lamp, so perhaps he didn't understand the Persian word in Bar Bahlul.

Even Bar Bahlul's form ܐܡܦܘܫܐ seems to be a mistake for ܐܡܦܘܦܐ (a different penultimate letter)!
#IntellectualHistory

A reminder that #translation is not just matching equivalents to words, but requires understanding the source culture.

I was confused by the phrase "the Son of God indicated (to) stubborn resistance" in the introduction to the text I am translating (where the same #Syriac might have "to" or not).

Then I remembered the #medieval authorial practice of self-deprecation, and the scribe is saying not that Christ revealed what stubbornness looks like, but rather that Christ revealed theology to the author, who characterizes himself as "stubborn resistance."

(The same realization cleared up several other confusions in the same section. It's a thing.)
#theology #Christianity #Shbadnaya