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Like other Aramaic dialects in the Near East, such as Palmyrene, Nabataean, and Hatrene, Syriac was commonly employed in inscriptions and official documents, which were produced in the kingdom of Edessa. About one hundred and fifty such inscriptions and documents survive, the vast majority of which are chance finds; the continuous settlement of Edessa up to modern times has precluded systematic excavations, and many more inscriptions are certainly still to be recovered. Most of the known inscriptions are helpfully collected, published, and translated in one volume (Drijvers and Healey 1999; its numeration is followed here), with recent additions of new finds (notably Healey 2006; Önal 2017: 132–141); they all come from Osrhoene, with the only known exception being three short graffiti on sherds found in Krefeld, in Germany, that may suggest a link with merchants from Edessa (Luther 2009). Several inscriptions are on mosaics and are often accompanied by a rich iconography; they demonstrate a link to so-called Parthian art (for which see ssss1), but their technique and geometric ornamentation are Roman (ssss1). The language of these inscriptions is known as “Old Syriac,” thus differentiating it from “Classical Syriac,” the language used in the manuscripts and employed for literature, from which it differs in some important orthographic and morphologic features (most notably in the rendering of the proto-Semitic *ś and the use of different prefixes to mark the masculine third person singular imperfect). Scholars are still divided on the origins of the linguistic peculiarities of Classical Syriac, and possible explanations include a chronological development of Old Syriac or a reflection of a different register or variety in the spoken language (Van Rompay 1994; Healey 2008a, 2017; Gzella 2019).