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ARAMAIC BRANCH
291
Very few inscriptions have survived. Some are on lead and some (magic texts) inside earthenware bowls, of the seventh and eighth centuries A.D. There are, however, many Mandæan manuscripts in the British Museum, in Oxford, Paris, Berlin and in the Vatican, belonging mainly to the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries A.D., the oldest in Europe being of the sixteenth century A.D.
The chief work is the post-Islamic Book of Adam (also called Ginza, "treasure," or Sidra rabba, the "Great Book"), a mass of extravagant ravings. Mandian is the most corrupt of all Aramaic dialects and its script (Fig. 136, col. 8) also differs very much from the other members of the Aramaic branch.
The Mandaans look upon their alphabet as magic and sacred. Lady Drower (formerly Miss E. S. Stevens), an authority on the subject, points out that "the marsh people go to the Mandæan priests for charms written either in Arabic or Mandaic. The latter, being in an unknown language and script, are thought very potent.... Large sums of money are paid for such writings." The Mandians call their alphabet abaga; the verb abaga means also "he read a spell." Writing is patronized by the planet Nbu. Lady Drower points out that according to the Mandians, each letter represents a power of life and light, and the first and last letters, in the form of a small circle, are the same and represent perfection of light and life. "Letters of the alphabet, inscribed on twenty-four scraps of silver or gold, are placed under the pillow of a person who desires heavenly guidance in some matter of difficulty."
The origin of this alphabet is uncertain. Two of the greatest authorities on North Semitic epigraphy, Neldeke and Lidzbarski, pointed out the likeness of the Mandæan and Nabatean scripts, but according to Rosenthal, the main resemblance lies in the letter aleph, and it might have depended not on a direct connection between the two scripts but on their parallel development from the Aramaic alphabet.
In my opinion, the Mandaan script might have descended from a cursive Aramaic script similar to that which was the parent of the Nabatean, but influenced by the Syriac script. The Mandaan vocalization is interesting. The consonants alef, waw and yod, abbreviated, became vowels and are added as appendages to the consonants. The Mandæan alphabet has thus become in practice a syllabary similar to the Ethiopic script.
MANICHEAN ALPHABET (Fig. 136, col. 9)
Manes or Manichæus (born about A.D. 215 in Babylonia, of Persian parentage, and crucified about 273) founded in 247 the religion known as Manichæan, which for a millennium (from the third to the thirteenth century A.D.) was one of the most widely disseminated throughout the world. At the end of the third and during the fourth century it spread through western Asia, southern Europe, northern Africa (St. Augustine was for ten years a follower of Manichæism), Gaul and Spain, but by the seventh century it was already practically extinct in these regions.
