Version 1.0, 4 May 2018
Version history:
1.0, 4 May 2018
The Imperial Aramaic script
The Imperial Aramaic script is a right-to-left abjad. Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Persian empires, hence the name for the language and for the script.
Encoding of Imperial Aramaic text
With the introduction of Imperial Aramaic in the Unicode Standard v. 5.2.0 in 2009 as a script distinct from Hebrew, encoding of Imperial Aramaic text as Hebrew is no longer allowed in Brill publications in order to safeguard seamless data interchange.
Support for Imperial Aramaic text in applications
At the time of this writing, very few applications support the Imperial Aramaic script without errors. On macOS (from at least High Sierra, macOS v. 10.13.x), all applications using Apple’s text engine render Imperial Aramaic text in the correct right-to-left order.
Most applications need to be told what the writing direction is by preceding each string consisting of Imperial Aramaic text with a Unicode Directional Formatting character Right to Left Override, RLO = U+202E. Such strings must be concluded with a Pop Directional Formatting character, PDF = U+202C, to return to the default writing direction, unless the Imperial Aramaic text ends a paragraph: the writing direction is automatically reset to the default direction at the beginning of each new paragraph.
Fonts
There are only a few fonts available for the Imperial Aramaic script as per the time of this writing, May 4, 2018.
Michael Everson’s Everson Mono (monowidth) family of fonts. Their Courier-like style is not suitable for typesetting regular text.
Aramaic Imperial Yeb, made by the late Yoram Gnat (יורם גנת), as found in the SourceForge Culmus collection AncientSemiticFonts-0.06-1. It has a cursive style reminiscent of the Aramaic texts found in some Elephantine papyri. The font name Yeb refers to the Egyptian name of the Elephantine island, which was called Ꜣbw (approx. yebu, ‘elephant’, ‘ivory’); Coptic (Ⲉ)ⲓⲏⲃ (approx. (E)yeb or (I)yeb.)
Noto Sans Imperial Aramaic, a sans-serif font.
Styles, default font
Two writing styles are common: a monumental inscriptional style, and a cursive style such as is found in the Elephantine papyri. Given the scarcity of Imperial Aramaic fonts, Aramaic Imperial Yeb was chosen as the default Imperial Aramaic font; texts from the Elephantine papyri are found in Brill publications. This does not preclude the possibility that inscriptional Imperial Aramaic texts will appear in Brill publications at a later date, and at such a time an inscriptional Imperial Aramaic font will have to be chosen.
Peculiarities of the Aramaic Imperial Yeb font
The Aramaic Imperial Yeb font contains Imperial Aramaic glyphs encoded both as proper Imperial Aramaic characters and as Hebrew-range characters. In Brill publications, only use proper Imperial Aramaic encoding, never Hebrew encoding.
Type specifications
Brill 11 pt: ~ Aramaic Imperial Yeb 11 pt
Brill 10 pt: ~ Aramaic Imperial Yeb 10 pt
Brill 9 pt: ~ Aramaic Imperial Yeb 9 pt
It should be noted that the above values are preliminary, pending a decision based on larger samples of Imperial Aramaic text.
