chapter five

Literature

Paolo Merlo

1. Introduction

The corpus of ancient Aramaic texts is rather limited and cannot be com- pared with other Ancient Near Eastern examples, such as the Akkadian or Egyptian ones. Strictly speaking, no literary work has yet come to light within the corpus of Old Aramaic inscriptions from Syria except for the poorly preserved and fragmented inscription from Tell Deir ʿAlla. It is nevertheless possible to discover some literary features in Old Aramaic inscriptions of other genres, such as royal inscriptions, stelae, letters, or international treaties. In this chapter some literary aspects and stylistic devices of these ancient Aramaic texts shall be reviewed.

2. Terminology

“Old Aramaic” usually refers to the earliest phase of the Aramaic lan- guage.1 The texts pertaining to this period date from the origin of the language in the 9th century B.C. to the rise of the Babylonian empire in the 6th century B.C. While the starting date is self-evident (it marks the earliest possible evidence of Aramaic), some problems arise when deter- mining the lower chronological limit. Some scholars set the beginning of “Official Aramaic” with the spread of the Assyrian empire around 700 B.C. (J.A. Fitzmyer), others place the lower limit of the Old Aramaic language at the collapse of the Assyrian Empire (St. A. Kaufman), and still others consider the texts from the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian period to be a new phase of Old Aramaic (V. Hug). The scholars following the latter theory divide the Old Aramaic corpus into two main groups: the earlier Old Aramaic inscriptions (i.e., the texts of the independent Aramaean cities), and the later Old Aramaic inscriptions (i.e., the texts produced

1 For more details, cf. H. Gzella’s contribution in this volume. 110 paolo merlo during the Assyrian and Babylonian rule over these regions). For the sake of comprehensiveness, the latter theory will be followed in this chapter.

3. Overview on History and Literary Genres

The first mentions of Aramaeans come from some Assyrian annalistic texts of Tiglath-Pileser I dated at the end of the 12th century B.C.2 The Aramaeans began at that time to form many independent city-states in northern Mesopotamia and Syria. The oldest inscriptions ascribed to Aramaean kings date back to the 9th century B.C., but these texts still make use of the Phoenician script and language.3 At the end of the 9th century B.C. the oldest Aramaic inscriptions emerged in northern Mesopotamia (Tell Halaf: KAI 231; Tell Fekheriyeh: KAI 309), Syria (Melqart stele: KAI 201), and northern Palestine (Tel Dan: KAI 310). Even though all these texts belong to the type of monumental inscriptions, each exemplifies a more specific literary genre such as votive inscriptions or dedications (KAI 201; 231; 309) and a royal victory inscrip- tion (KAI 310). In the course of the 8th century B.C., many other Aramaic inscriptions were written that present clear literary outlines, due also to their length. The main texts of this period are the royal inscriptions from Zincirli and ancient Samʾal (KAI 214–218),4 the Zakkur stele from the Syrian kingdom of Hamath (KAI 202), the monumental Sefire treaty inscriptions (KAI 222–224),5 some funerary inscriptions from the cities of Neirab (KAI 225–226), the Kuttamuwa inscription from Zincirli,6 and the two frag- ments of the Bukan memorial stele found in Iran (KAI 320). The Assyrian domination of the Ancient Near East during the late 8th and 7th centuries B.C. led to both a considerable standardization and widespread knowledge of the Aramaic language throughout the Ancient Near East. Unfortunately, the extant Aramaic texts from the Assyrian period (ca. 7th century B.C.) are rather brief and lack significant literary features. They mainly consist of administrative texts or notes written on clay tablets,7 an epistolary text known as the Ashur ostrakon (KAI 233),

2 RIMA 2 A.0.87.4:34; cf. Grayson 1991: 43. 3 Cf. the Kulamuwa inscription KAI 24. 4 Cf. Tropper 1993. 5 Cf. Fitzmyer 21995. 6 Cf. Pardee 2009a and id. 2009b. 7 Cf. Fales 1986; Röllig 2002a; id. 2002b.