Imperial Aramaic in the context of "Sabbas"

Assyriology (from Greek Ἀσσυρίᾱ, Assyriā; and -λογία, -logia), also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers Pre Dynastic Mesopotamia, Sumer, the early Sumero-Akkadian city-states, the Akkadian Empire, Ebla, the Akkadian and Imperial Aramaic speaking states of Assyria, Babylonia and the Sealand Dynasty, the migrant foreign dynasties of southern Mesopotamia, including the Gutians, Amorites, Kassites, Arameans, Suteans and Chaldeans. Assyriology can be included to cover Neolithic pre-Dynastic cultures dating to as far back as 8000 BC, to the Islamic Conquest of the 7th century AD, so the topic is significantly wider than that implied by the root "Assyria".

The large number of cuneiform clay tablets preserved by these Sumero-Akkadian and Assyro-Babylonian cultures provide an extremely large resource for the study of the period. The region's—and the world's—first cities and city-states, like Ur, are archaeologically invaluable for studying the growth of urbanization.

Palmyrene Aramaic was a Middle Aramaic dialect, exhibiting both Eastern and Western Aramaic grammatical features, and is therefore often regarded as a dialect continuum between the two branches. It was primarily documented in Palmyra itself, but also found in the western parts of the Roman Empire, extending as far as Britannia. Dated inscriptions range from 44 BCE to 274 CE, with over 4,000 known inscriptions, mostly comprising honorific, dedicatory, and funerary texts. The dialect still retains echoes of earlier Imperial Aramaic. The lexicon bears influences from both Koine Greek and, to some extent, Arabic.

The dual had disappeared from it.

The Khalili Collection of Aramaic Documents is a private collection of letters and documents from the Bactria region in present-day Afghanistan, assembled by the British collector and philanthropist Nasser D. Khalili. It is one of the Khalili Collections: eight collections of artifacts assembled, conserved, published and exhibited by Khalili.

The documents, written in Imperial Aramaic, likely originated from the historical city of Balkh and all are dated between 353 BC to 324 BC, mostly during the reign of Artaxerxes III. The most recent of the documents was written during the early part of Alexander the Great's reign in the region. These letters use in Aramaic the original Greek form Alexandros (spelled Lksndrs) instead of the Eastern variant Iskandar (spelled Lksndr). The collection also includes eighteen tally sticks recording transfers of goods during the reign of Darius III. The collection's letters, administrative records, and military documents are significant for the linguistic study of the Official Aramaic language and of daily life in the Achaemenid empire.