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ARAMAIC BRANCH
279 ornamental or monumental class: (1) the dcriture arrondie, commonly employed in the first century A.D., which slowly developed into (2) the écriture brisée, employed in the late second century, and until the end of Palmyra.
According to Cantineau, the Palmyrene monumental and cursive scripts originated and were employed contemporaneously, but in Prof. Albright's opinion the prototype of the Palmyrene cursive character branched off from the Aramaic script between 250 and 1OO B.C., whereas the Palmyrene monumental script developed from the cursive during the first century B.C. The early changes in the Palmyrene scripts consisted primarily in calligraphical details and in the ligatures.
Palmyrene inscriptions have been discovered in Palmyra, DuraEuropos, Palestine, Egypt and in other parts of North Africa; on the site of the ancient Tomi (old Constantza) on the Black Sea, in Hungary, in Italy, and even in England. The Latin-Palmyrene (Fig. 137. 1) bilingual inscription, discovered at South Shields, in the neighbouring Roman camp, is now in the Free Library of South Shields. Its Latin texts runs: D[is] [anibus] Regina libertu et conjuge (sic!) Barates Palmyrenus natione Cattuallauna an nis XXX. Fig. 137, 2 shows another Palmyrene inscription. The earliest Palmyrene inscription, belonging to the year 44 B.C., was discussed at the XXIst. Intern. Congress of Orientalists (Paris, 1948) Fig. 137. 3. Another early inscription, belonging to the year 33 B.C., was previously discovered at Dura-Europos. The latest inscription, written in the Palmyrene cursive script, is dated A.D. 274, that is only two years after the Roman conquest of the city. The most
ant Palmyrene epigraphic monument 18 a Greek-Palmyrene bilingual inscription, dated A.D. 137, and containing the famous "Palmyrene Tariff," or Law of taxes, With its 162 lines in Palmyrene, it is the longest North Semitic text. It was discovered in 1881 by Prince S. A. Lazarev. SYRIAC SCRIPTS Syrians
The terms "Armeans" and "Syrians," "Aram" and "Syri," as already mentioned, are synonymous. The Hebrew Arany is rendered in the LXX by Syria. However, the term "Syriac" denotes the ancient Semitic language and literature of the "Syriac Christians, but the latter term is not synonymous with "Christian inhabitants of Syria;" it roughly denotes those Christians who employed the Syriac descendant of Aramaic, or were part of the Syriac Church under influence of Syriac thought and Hellenistic culture.
Their Scripts The early Syriac alphabet (Fig. 136, col. 2) was the last important descendant of the Aramaic branch.
The French scholar J. Cantineau considers the Syriac alphabet as related to the cursive Palmyrene, the former having been influenced
