Samaritan alphabet

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History of the Alphabet
Middle Bronze Age 19–15th c. BC Canaanite-Phoenician 14th c. BC Paleo-Hebrew 10th c. BC Aramaic 9th c. BC Brāhmī & Indic 6th c. BC Tibetan 7th c. Khmer/Javanese 9th c. Hebrew 3rd c. BC Syriac 2nd c. BC Nabatean 2nd c. BC Arabic 4th c. Pahlavi 2nd c. BC Avestan 4th c. Greek 9th c. BC Etruscan 8th c. BC Latin 7th c. BC Runes 2nd c. Ogham 4th c. Gothic 4th c. Armenian 405 Glagolitic 862 Cyrillic 10th c. Samaritan 6th c. BC Iberian 6th c. BC Epigraphic South Arabian 9th c. BC Ge'ez 5–6th c. BC
Meroitic 3rd c. BC
Hangul 1443
Zhuyin 1913
Complete genealogy

The Samaritan alphabet is a direct descendant of the paleo-Hebrew variety of the Phoenician alphabet, the more commonly known Hebrew alphabet having been adapted from the Aramaic alphabet under the Persian Empire. Large parts of the Hebrew Bible were originally penned in this script. Among the Jews it saw a short revival during the Hasmonean Kingdom. The Tetragrammaton was often still written in this script for some time after the current Hebrew alphabet was adopted among the Jews.

Today, it is used by the Samaritans for religious writings, including their (slightly different) version of the Pentateuch. It is used by them for writings in their dialect of Hebrew (Samaritan Hebrew) and also for commentaries and translations in Samaritan Aramaic and even Arabic.