interprovincial language of the Persian government; this rendered it until Alexander's conquest the lingua franca of an empire extending 'from India to Ethiopia'. Such a triumph on the part of a language not backed up by imperial power has no parallel in history.
With the spread of Aramaic the Phoenician alphabet, which the Aramaeans were the first to adopt, also spread and passed on to other languages in Asia. The Hebrews got their alphabet from Aramaeans between the sixth and fourth centuries. The square characters in which Hebrew Bibles are now printed developed from the Aramaic script. The North Arabians received their alphabet, in which the Koran is written, from the Aramaic used by the Nabataeans. The Armenians, Persians and Indians acquired their alphabets likewise from Aramaean sources.
In the course of time the Aramaic language split into two groups, a western which included biblical Aramaic, Palmyrene, Nabataean and other dialects, and an eastern comprising Mandaic and Syriac. Syriac became, with local variations, the language of the churches of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Mesopotamia and was used from the third to the thirteenth centuries, when it was displaced by Arabic. It is still spoken in three villages of Anti-Lebanon, and is still used in the Maronite and other liturgies of the Syrian Christians.
The deity who received the largest measure of Aramaean worship was the storm-god Hadad, also called Rimmon (thunderer). A god of lightning and thunder, Hadad was beneficent when he sent rain which fructified the earth, maleficent when he sent floods. His consort, a goddess of generation, was worshipped under the name Atargatis, a typical Semitic earth-mother, often depicted veiled. Besides this divine couple the Aramaean pantheon comprised an assortment of minor deities, some local in character, others borrowed from neighbours. Chief among these were the sun god and moon god worshipped throughout the Semitic world.
