Considering the vast importance of cuneiform studies—for Shemitic in general, and for our know ledge of Aramaic or Chaldee' in particular—we shall try briefly to sum up the results hitherto arrived at in this youngest of philological and palmographi cal sciences. There are three principal kinds of cuneiform—a mode of writing, be it observed by the way, principally used for rnonumental records : a kind of cursive being used for records of minor im portance—called respectively the Persian, Mcdian, and Assyrian. The first, which seems to have died out 370 B.C., has from 39 to 44 alphabetical signs or combinations, which never consist of more than five vredges. Its words are divided by oblique strokes. The language it represents is Indo-Germanic—the mother of Zend. The second, variously called Median, Scythic, etc., and supposed to represent a Turanian dialect, is the least known and the least important. An alphabet of about too syllabic combinations has been constructed out of the very scanty remains in which it appears. The third and most momentous kind, the Assyrian, seems to have spread widest. Not only in Babylon and Nineveh, on the Euphrates and Tigris, but in Egypt itself has it been found. More than 400 combinations, phonetic, syllabic, and ideographic, have been distinguished in it, although our know ledge is limited to a proportionately small num ber of them. But the difficulties offered here are of the most extraordinary kind. The spelling is varied Constantly, the signs occasionally repre sent different sounds (polyphonous), and the samc sounds again are represented by different signs (homophonous). Finally, not one, but five or more dialects have been traced in them ; dialects belong ing to different tribes or periods. Thus it will be easily understood that many and momentous philo logical problems await their solution from the pro gress on this field ; and little but conjecture is as yet allowed on the special points of our present subject. Of a primmval Babylonian literature, how ever, supposed to be preserved in certain Arabic translations, of which some hopes were entertained of late years, nothing reliable has come to light— although the existence of ancient Babylonian writ ings on mathematics, astronomy (combined with astrology), and chronology, is affirmed by ancient authors.
Turning, however, to what specimens of ' Ara maic' there are preserved, we first of all find certain dialects represenied in them which have been variously divided into `Chaldee ' and Aramaic,' or into East-Aramaic' and West-Aramaic,' or again, into Jewish," Heathen,' and Christian,' and finally, into Palestinian' and Babylonian' Aramaic. Discarding the term Chaldee' as liable to give most rise to misunderstanding—it is first found in the Alexandrines (xetoctFo-rl), and was adopted by Jerome—we may, for the sake of brevity, distinguish between Aramman (trint4) and Syriac (41DilD, -or! pc,5), which carry, at least in their present form of writing, the most unmistakable line of demarcation on their face. In the first, the Aramaic (Jewish), we have further to distinguish—a. The Galilean dialect, which seems to have been notorious for its carelessness in the use and pronunciation of its consonants and vowels. The sounds of K and Ch, P and B, etc.,
and above all the gutturals, were hardly distinguish able in their speech. Of so little importance, in deed, do these seem to have been, that they are frequently lost altogether, and entirely new sounds and compounds are formed—scarcely to be re. duced to any grammatical or logical rule--by the mere vulgarity of an idiom saturated, moreover, with unconglomemted foreign elements to the last degree. b. The Santarilan—i. e. vulgar Hebrew and Aramman mixed up together, in accordance with the genesis of the people itself. It, too, changes its guttumls, uses the most extensively, and does not distinguish the mute consonants. c. The YernsaIan or 7lidaan dialect scarcely ever pro nounces the final gutturals ; and has besides many peculiar turns of its own, which show all the symp toms of provincialism, but it boasts of a fuller vocalisation. Its orthography, however, is one of the strangest imaginable. This last is the most important dialect of the three Aramaic ones, for in it the whole gigantic targumic and (partly) tal mudical literature is written, while of the Samaritan there exist but few documents of a theological (Sam. Vetsion), liturgical, and grammatical nature, and the Galilean never had, as far as we know, any literature of its own. We need but briefly mention here the minor (4 heathen') branches, such as Zabian —standing between Aramaic and Syriac, the language of a mystico-theosophical sect called the Mendaites (= Gnostics), which is largely mixed with Persian elements, and almost bereft of gram mar ; the Palmyrene, a kind of Syriac, written in square Hebraic characters ; and the Aupto-Ara male, found on some monuments (stone of Car pentras, Papyri), probably due to Babylonian Jews living in Egypt, who had adopted the religion of their new country.
All Aramzean ' literature—in contradistinction to Syriac'—is, it need hardly be added, Jewish ; from the chaptcrs in Daniel, written in this idiom, to the last remnant penned in Palestine or Babylon (the worship in the temple and the earlier schools being, as we said, the only places for which the Holy Language,' was partly retained), this was the exclusively used popular idiom. It had, in fact, become so popular and universal that it came to be called 'Eppatarl (N. T. passim). How it grew to be so universally adopted has hardly been suffi ciently explained as yet ; for the Captivity alone, or even any number of successively returning batches of immigrants from Babylonia, do not quite account for the phenomenon of a seemingly poor and cor rupt dialect supplanting so completely that other hallowed by the most sacred traditions, that this became a dead language in its own country. The fact, however, is undeniable, as at the time of Christ even Scripture itself was popularly only known through the medium of the Aramaic Tar gums. Nearly all the Shemitisms in the N. T. are Aramaic, and the same may be said with regard to those found in Josephus : cf. Matt. v. 22, Pucci --= xvi. 17, P&p 'Lova= ;Iv ,a; xxvii. 46, ix/ Anpa craPax0avl = +Inpnv rith +St. +5N; I Cor. XVi. 22, papew dB& =NI1N ; Joseph. Antiq.