books. The Dead Sea Scrolls are an eloquent testimony to this trend(1). It is highly developed in postbiblical writings and thus makes up for the absence of vowel signs. It is often said that the matres lectionis were first used in word-final positions, subsequently spreading to word-medial positions. But an Assyrian-Aramaic bilingual inscription discovered in 1979, which probably dates to the 9th c. B.C. and so is one of the earliest Aramaic documents yet known, provides ample instances of word-medial