A brilliant thread by my brilliant friend @bnuyaminim.bsky.social. But let's think about this circumstantial evidence a bit more. Are names really indicative of one's language or ethnicity (hard to pin that down actually)? This Nabataean from NW Arabia belongs to the clan of Banī Baʿlnatan...
Posts by Matthew Saunders
Fantastic keynote lecture this evening at the Summer School in Languages and Linguistics at @unileiden.bsky.social.
Ahmad al-Jallad spoke about the decipherment of South Arabic inscription from Dhofar, which was all the rage in the media world-wide last week.
no YOUR reconstruction of Aramaic nominal inflection is idiosyncratic and confusing
Looking forward to participating in this conference: Studying Hebrew in Sixteenth-Century Strasbourg / L’hébraïsme chrétien à Strasbourg au XVIe siècle (Strasbourg, June 16-17)
New issue of Journal of Near Eastern Studies Vol. 84, No. 1 (2025) www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/jnes/202... @chicagojournals.bsky.social
@marshallcunningham.bsky.social @shanazaia.bsky.social
journal cover: S. Astvatsatsin Church, Areni, from the north. Photo by Bertramz, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
New issue of Near Eastern Archaeology Vol. 88, No. 1 (2025) www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/nea/2025...
@asor-research.bsky.social @chicagojournals.bsky.social @christinatsoup.bsky.social @zuzchovanec.bsky.social
@melucene.bsky.social
Very much enjoyed giving this lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary last week! The talk was on "Languages Beyond Borders: Principles of Aramaic-Based Code-Alternation in the Hebrew Bible"
m-saunders.com/jhu-pts-doct...
The order of the early NWS alphabet was, for some time, in flux, but I never thought about whether the placement of some words next to each other was coincidental, or as GKC suggests "certainly not accidental". E.g., yōd 'hand' and kāp̄ 'palm' are side-by-side, as are ˁayin 'eye' and pê 'mouth'.
Learning the basics of Meroitic and Old Nubian through the Macquarie Ancient Languages School this week
Here’s how you write my name in ancient Meroitic cursive: 𐦨𐦵𐦮𐦡𐦥𐦡. In Meroitic hieroglyphs, it's 𐦉𐦚𐦒𐦁𐦅𐦁
Read right to left, this is transcribed ma+te+ha+e+wa+e
Learning ancient languages is fun!
journal cover
New issue of Aramaic Studies Vol. 22, No. 2 (2024) brill.com/view/journal... @degruyterbrill.bsky.social
Just wrapped up my penultimate semester of coursework at JHU and finally catching up on social media. Excited to see Bluesky thriving—much more active and engaging than X/Twitter! Also thrilled to dive into my new dissertation project on the history of Aramaic. Big things ahead!