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Writing Systems Technical Resources

Hatran

Detail from inscription on marble slab in Hatra, Iraq (see Use & History)

Script details

See all script details: code, region, status and more
Code Hatr
Script type abjad
Region Middle Eastern
Status Historical
Direction RTL
Baseline unspecified
Case unknown
White space unspecified
Complex behaviors
OpenType code hatr
ISO 15924 Numeric Code / Key 127 (right-to-left alphabetic)

Explanation of script details

Script description

Hatran writing was discovered in 1912 in present-day al-Hadr, an ancient city in the al-Jazira region of Iraq which used to be called Hatra.

Read the full description…Over 100 stone inscriptions were uncovered by archaeologists working for Iraqi Department of Antiquities; since then approximately 500 more texts have been discovered. Most of these were short, and as a result it has been difficult to deduce a great deal about the Aramaic dialect, called Aramaic of Hatra, which the script represented.

The Hatran script is an abjad; vowels were not written but matres lectiones were sometimes used to indicate the long vowels /o:/ and /ı:/.

Languages that use this script

LanguageWriting System
Code		Writing System
Status		SLDR/CLDR
locale		Regional
variants
Official Aramaic (700-300 BCE)arc-Hatrin use arc-Hatr-XX
Uncoded languagesmis-Hatrin use mis-Hatr-001
mis-Hatr-IQ (Iraq)

Unicode status

In The Unicode Standard, Hatran script implementation is discussed in Chapter 10 Middle East-II: Ancient Scripts.

Resources