A Grammar Of Egyptian Aramaic

This is the first up-to-date, and complete grammar of Egyptian Aramaic as presented in texts of Egyptian provenance dating from the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. and as edited by B. Porten and A. Yardeni in their Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt (Jerusalem, 1986-). The grammar covers not only the phonology and morphology, but contains a substantial section on morphosyntax and syntax. It is a descriptive grammar enriched with the expert knowledge and familiarity of one of the co-authors with the contents and background of the texts in question. It is meant to replace P. Leander's Laut- und Formenlehre des Ägyptisch-Aramäischen (1928), but also supplements it substantially, because it had no syntax. Due to the utmost importance and interest of these ancient texts, this grammar is a vade mecum for every Aramaist, Semitist and Historian in the field.

This up-to-date grammar of Egyptian Aramaic of the middle of the first millennium BCE is meant to replace P. Leander's grammar of 1928, but also has a substantial section on syntax, which was totally lacking in Leander's grammar. The grammar is based on a much greater amount of texts than is the case with Leander's grammar, but also on an edition of texts incorporating a personal fresh study of them as presented in Porten and Yardeni's "Textbook of Aramaic Texts from Ancien Egypt" (1986).

Appendices -- Index of passages -- Index of subjects -- Tables of loan-words -- Concordance of principal editions -- Individual scribes and dates -- List of technical terms.

This is a comprehensive reference grammar of Qumran Aramaic. Not only Aramaic texts from Qumran caves, but also contemporary texts originating from other neighbouring locations in the Judaean Desert such as Nahal Hever, Murabba'at, Jericho, and Massada are covered. It would be an important tool of study for specialists in Aramaic linguistics, the Jewish culture of the Second Temple period, and the New Testament. The scope and nature of the grammar is comparable to that of Muraoka - Porten, A Grammar of Egyptian Aramaic (2nd revised ed., 2003).

This is a study of the interrelationships between the formulary traditions of the legal documents of the Jewish colony of Elephantine and the legal formulary traditions of their Egyptian counterparts. The legal documents of Elephantine have been approached in three different ways thus far: first, comparing them to the later Aramaic legal tradition; second, as part of a self-contained system, and more recently from the point of view of the Assyriological legal tradition. However, there is still a fourth possible approach, which has long been neglected by scholars in this field, and that is to study the Elephantine legal documents from an Egyptological perspective. In seeking the Egyptian parallels and antecedents to the Aramaic formulary, Botta hopes to balance the current scholarly perspective, based mostly upon Aramaic and Assyriological comparative studies.