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ARAMAIC BRANCH
fight a duel with the cuneiform system of writing. It was a long struggleit lasted until the commencement of the Christian era-between the complicated theocratic system of writing accessible only to certain privileged classes and the simple "democratic" system accessible to everybody.
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Development (Fig. 126-127)
The Aramaic script gradually assumed a distinctive character which is marked by the following main tendencies: (1) The opening of the tops and the sides of a few letters (the beth, the daleth and resh, the 'ayin) is a prominent feature. (2) The endeavour to reduce the number of separate strokes, in the kheth and teth, for instance, is also noticeable. (3) Angles become rounded and ligatures develop. These tendencies were completed during the Persian period. By the fifth century B.C. the transformation is complete, as we can gather from the inscription at Taima, in northern Arabia, and especially from the cursive Aramaic writing on papyrus used in Egypt between 500 and 200 B.C.
"Dog-Aramaic"
Some extant Aramaic written documents are in Aramaic script, but couched in a kind of "Dog-Aramaic," that is Aramaic mixed with a foreign language or strongly influenced by a foreign form of speech; see also under Nabatean Script, Persian Script, and so forth.
An inscription found in 1923, by E. E. Herzfeld, in Naqsh-i-Rustam, and published in 1938, was at first considered as Aramaic, and later as Persian in Aramaic script. Indeed, some words seem to be in Aramaic, while others have not yet been explained.
Armazi Aramaic
Two interesting inscriptions were discovered in 1940 at Armazi twenty-two km. from Tiflis, in excavations under the direction of the Georgian archæologist I. Javakhishvili. They were reported briefly in the same year at the session of the Scientific Council of the Marr Institute of Languages, History and Material Culture, Tiflis, and on the following 1st March at the first conference of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR (Sark-art-velos SSR Mecnierebat a Akademia), Tiflis. One of the two inscriptions is bilingual, in Greek and Aramaic. The Greek text, containing 10 lines, was published in 1941 by S. Qaukhchishvili and A. Shanidze.
The Aramaic text (Fig. 131, 7) was published by Professor George Tseretheli, in the "BULL. OF THE MARR INSTITUTE," Vol. XIII, 1942 (A Bilingual Inscription from Armazi near Mcheta (Mtskhet'a), in Georgia). It
