Editing Suret language (section)

===History===
{{See also|Aramaic alphabet}}
[[File:Syriac papyri.jpg|thumb|150px|[[Papyrus]] fragment of the 9th century written in [[Syriac alphabet#West Syriac Serṭā|Serto]] variant. A passage from the [[Acts of the Apostles]] is recognizable]]
The original [[Mesopotamia]]n writing system, believed to be the world's oldest, was derived around 3600 BC from this method of keeping accounts. By the end of the 4th millennium BC, the Mesopotamians were using a triangular-shaped stylus made from a reed pressed into soft clay to record numbers.<ref>Odisho, Edward Y. (2001). "ADM's educational policy: A serious project of Assyrian language maintenance and revitalization ", Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, Xv/1:3–31.</ref> Around 2700 BC, [[cuneiform]] began to represent syllables of spoken [[Sumerian language|Sumerian]], a [[language isolate]] genetically unrelated to the [[Semitic languages|Semitic]] and [[Indo-Iranian languages]] that it neighboured. About that time, Mesopotamian cuneiform became a general purpose writing system for [[logogram]]s, [[syllable]]s and numbers. This script was adapted to another Mesopotamian language, the [[East Semitic languages|East Semitic]] [[Akkadian language|Akkadian]] ([[Old Assyrian period|Assyrian]] and [[Babylonia]]n) around 2600 BC.

With the adoption of [[Aramaic language|Aramaic]] as the ''[[lingua franca]]'' of the [[Neo-Assyrian Empire]] (911–609{{nbsp}}BC), Old Aramaic was also adapted to Mesopotamian cuneiform. The last cuneiform scripts in Akkadian discovered thus far date from the 1st century AD.<ref>The Origin and Development of the Cuneiform System of Writing, Samuel Noah Kramer, ''Thirty Nine Firsts in Recorded History'' pp. 381–383</ref> Various bronze lion-weights found in [[Nineveh]] featured both the Akkadian and Aramaic text etched on them, bearing the names of [[List of Assyrian kings|Assyrian kings]], such as [[Shalmaneser III]] (858-824 B.C), [[Sargon II|King Sargon]] (721-705 B.C) and [[Sennacherib]] (704-681 B.C). Indication of contemporaneous existence of the two languages in 4th century B.C. is present in an Aramaic document from [[Uruk]] written in cuneiform. In [[Babylon]], Akkadian writing vanished by 140 B.C, with the exclusion of a few priests who used it for religious matters. Though it still continued to be employed for astronomical texts up until the [[Common Era|common era]].<ref>"State Archives of Assyria, Volume III: Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea", by Alasdair Livingstone, [[Helsinki University]] Press.</ref>

The Syriac script is a [[writing system]] primarily used to write the [[Syriac language]] from the 1st century AD.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/578972/Syriac-alphabet | title=Syriac alphabet | encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica Online | access-date=16 June 2012}}</ref> It is one of the [[Semitic languages|Semitic]] [[abjad]]s directly descending from the [[Aramaic alphabet]] and shares similarities with the [[Phoenician alphabet|Phoenician]], [[Hebrew alphabet|Hebrew]], [[Arabic alphabet|Arabic]] and the traditional [[Mongolian script|Mongolian alphabet]]s. The alphabet consists of 22 letters, all of which are consonants. It is a [[cursive]] script where some, but not all, letters connect within a word.<ref>Pennacchietti, Fabrizio A. (1997). "On the etymology of the Neo-Aramaic particle qam/kim; in Hebrew", M. Bar-Aher (ed.): Gideon Goldenberg Festschrift, Massorot, Stud</ref> Aramaic writing has been found as far north as [[Hadrian's Wall]] in [[Prehistoric Britain]], in the form of inscriptions in Aramaic, made by Assyrian soldiers serving in the [[Roman legion|Roman Legions]] in northern England during the 2nd{{nbsp}}century AD.<ref>{{Cite news | url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2009/oct/13/hadrians-wall |title = When Syrians, Algerians and Iraqis patrolled Hadrian's Wall &#124; Charlotte Higgins|newspaper = The Guardian|date = 2009-10-13|last1 = Higgins|first1 = Charlotte}}</ref>