Corpus of Nabataean Aramaic-Greek Inscriptions

Abstract

The impact of the Hellenization in the Ancient Near East resulted in a notable presence of Greek koiné language and culture and in the interaction between Greek and Nabataean that conducted inhabitants to engrave inscriptions in public spaces using one of the two languages or both. In this questionably ‘diglossic’ situation, a significant number of Nabataean-Greek inscriptions emerged, showing that the koiné was employed by the Nabataeans as a sign of Hellenistic cultural affinity. This book offers a linguistic and philological analysis of fifty-one Nabataean-Greek epigraphic evidences existing in northern Arabia, Near East and Aegean Sea, dating from the first century BCE to the third-fourth century CE. This collection is an analysis of the linguistic contact between Nabataean and Greek in the light of the modalities of social, religious and linguistic exchanges. In addition, the investigation of onomastics (mainly the Nabataean names transcribed in Greek script) might allow us to know more about the Nabataean phonological system.