Funerary stele carrying an inscription in Aramaic
It is noted that the Aramaic people, whose language was adopted like common language and official language in the Middle East for one long period, are at the same time that whose history is most badly known.
Establishment in Mésopotamie Appearance of these Semitic nomads which crossed Euphrate, coming from the east, during the XIV E front century J. - C., is announced in the administrative correspondence exchanged between the Hittite ones and Such Al-Amarna. It is known that they founded various small kingdoms rather quickly, of the city-States, the relays caravaneers and the hearths of trade in all the center of the Occidental Asia. Their goals primarily seem to have been to control the ways of exchanges and the roads of trade between Assyrie, the Hittite country and Palestine. Their kingdom of Bit Adini, whose Till Barsip was perhaps the capital, controlled the valley of Khaboura for a long time, in Mésopotamie, when the fall of the Hittite Empire enabled them to increase their power. Their principal known points of establishment are Samal, Damas, Arpad, Gouzana, Hamat, Sendjirli and Such Halaf. One sees them everywhere succeeding Mitanniens and Hittite, under conditions which remain been unaware of.
Aramaic civilization The insufficiency of the excavations and impossibility of continuing them on the key sites, such as Damas for example, prevent specifying the history of Aram, and from distinguishing what was Aramaic art.
Aramaic art
The lucky finds show foreign influences hardly letting appear a specific originality. The assessment of the works of art dating from the apogee of the Aramaics (second half of the II E thousand-year-old) and expressing a particular style is currently reduced in charge of Djabbul and to the Lion of Sheik Saad, to which some objects of bronze are added, whose statuette of Mishriffé (museum of Louvre) celebrates it. The Aramaics excelled nevertheless in the sculpture of the ivory, and the whole of the engraved plates found in the palate of Arslan Tash could be allotted by André Parrot to the Aramaic workshops of Damas, which it estimates to have been the principal center worker in ivory of the beginning of thousand-year-old Ier. One however noticed the extremely composite style of these admirable parts.
The Aramaic
The antiquated Aramaic language is known only by inscriptions for which the Phoenician alphabet was used. As of VIIIe century, whereas the Aramaics lose their independence, their language will replace the akkadien and will become the official language of Afghanistan in Egypt, on all the extent of the Persian Empire founded by Cyrus, until its conquest by Alexandre. It is only starting from this date that the Aramaic will be divided into several dialects. Jesus-Christ and her first disciples speak the Aramaic. The Arab conquest will put an end to the use of the Aramaic languages.