5th century BC-1st century AD. Part of a stele with incised Aramaic text in several lines, sinistrograde, in developed Dadanitic inscription, possibly part of a funerary inscription or a gravestone. See M.C.A. Macdonald (ed.), The development of Arabic as a written language, in Supplement to the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 40, Oxford, Archaeopress, 2010, pp.5-28, similar inscriptions on figs.4-5. 1.6 kg, 23.5cm (9 1/4"). From an important central London collection formed since the mid 1960s; thence by descent. Aramaic was probably introduced into North Arabia as an official written language by the last king of Babylon, Nabonidus. After Nabonidus returned to Babylon in 543 BC, it appears that Imperial Aramaic remained one of the written languages at Taym?? and seems gradually to have displaced Taymanitic. The Persian empire of the Achaemenids, which succeeded the Babylonian, continued to use Imperial Aramaic in its administration, though, at present, there is very little evidence of an Achaemenid presence in North Arabia. After Alexander the Great's conquest of the Achaemenid empire in 330 BC, North Arabia appears to have been more or less independent and, as in other parts of the former empire, local developments of the Imperial Aramaic script took place in Taym?? and possibly elsewhere, though not on present evidence in Dadan. Aramaic was used in Roman Jerusalem beside Greek and Latin.