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Alberto Rigolio

The present chapter offers an overview of the Syriac sources available for the study of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. The criterion for inclusion is, quite simply, the use of the Syriac language; the material is therefore arranged by type and is organized into “inscriptions and mosaics,” “coins,” “parchments and papyri,” “historiography,” and “other literature.”

Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic originally spoken in Edessa (modern Urfa, in Turkey) and its surrounding region, Osrhoene, which is enclosed by the Euphrates on the West and by one of its tributaries, the Khabur, on the East. After almost two centuries of Seleucid rule, Osrhoene became independent in 133 BCE, when a dynasty of “lords” (and later “kings”) took control of it and held this region for more than three centuries until its eventual annexation to the Roman Empire (ssss1). It was in the context of this independent kingdom of Edessa that the local dialect of Aramaic was first put into writing, and, for this purpose, a characteristic Syriac script was developed, drawing from a late version of the Achaemenid Aramaic script. This enterprise responded to the administrative and cultural needs of the kingdom of Edessa, and it may therefore be understood as part of a broader effort to elevate non-Greek identity; the Syriac record, however, offers abundant evidence for the study of the fertile and complex interactions between Greco-Roman and Near Eastern cultures. The use of Syriac was not limited to epigraphic and documentary settings: this language was also employed in a flourishing literature that continued to be produced both within and outside Osrhoene after Osrhoene was integrated into the Roman Empire and its dynasty of rulers permanently overthrown in the middle of the third century CE. Syriac literature, which includes a particularly rich strand of historiographical writing, continued to flourish for more than a millennium, and offers rich and fascinating material for the study of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East.