Armazic language

{{Short description|Extinct written Aramaic language}}

{{Expand Georgian}}

{{Infobox language

| name = Armazic

| altname = Armazian

| states = Armenia and Georgia

| region = South Caucasus

| era = 0–100 CE{{cite web|url=http://multitree.org/codes/xrm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191212015126/http://multitree.org/codes/xrm |url-status=dead |archive-date=12 December 2019 |title=Armazic - MultiTree|publisher=LINGUIST List |access-date=2024-04-19|quote=1st-2nd centuries AD. }}

| familycolor = Afro-Asiatic

| fam2 = Semitic

| fam3 = West Semitic

| fam4 = Central Semitic

| fam5 = Northwest Semitic

| fam6 = Aramoid?

| fam7 = Aramaic

| fam8 = (unclassified)

| script = Aramaic

| iso3 = xrm

| linglist = xrm

| glotto = none

| image = Armazi_Bilingual.jpg

| imagecaption = The Stele of Serapeitis, written in both Greek and the Armazic script.

}}

Armazic (also called Armazian) is an extinct written Aramaic language used as a language of administration in the South Caucasus in the first centuries AD.{{cite book|last1=Mgaloblishvili|first1=Tamila|last2=Rapp|first2=Stephen H.|editor1-last=van den Berg|editor1-first=Jacob Albert|editor2-last=Kotzé|editor2-first=Annemaré|editor3-last=Nicklas|editor3-first=Tobias|editor4-last=Scopello|editor4-first=Madeleine|title=In Search of Truth: Augustine, Manichaeism and other Gnosticism: Studies for Johannes van Oort at Sixty|date=2011|publisher=Brill|location=Leiden|isbn=978-90-04-18997-3|page=287f|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qeYE234vlgwC&q=%22armazic%22&pg=PA287|accessdate=1 September 2014|chapter=Chapter Seventeen: Manichaeism in late antique Georgia?}} Both the Armazic language and script were related to the Aramaic of northern Mesopotamia. The name "Armazic" was introduced by the Georgian scholar Giorgi Tsereteli in reference to Armazi, an ancient site near Mtskheta, Georgia, where several specimens of a local idiom of written Aramaic have been found, most famous among them the Stele of Serapeitis, bilingual in Greek. Beyond several sites in eastern Georgia, an Armazic-type inscription is also present on the temple of Garni in Armenia. The latest specimen of Armazic is an inscription of a 3rd-century plate from Bori, Georgia.{{cite book|last1=Rapp|first1=Stephen H.|title=The Sasanian World through Georgian Eyes: Caucasia and the Iranian Commonwealth in Late Antique Georgian Literature|date=2014|publisher=Ashgate Publishing|isbn=978-1472425522|page=215}}