Elymaic Letter Resh

Elymaic resh writes the consonant r. It is one letter in a right-to-left, non-joining script. Read it with the surrounding Elymaic text, not as a modern Latin-letter replacement.

Surviving inscriptions date from the 1st century BCE through the 3rd century CE. Elymaic adapted an Aramaic-derived script for local administration, where it wrote the official Aramaic used under Achaemenid rule. Rulers later used it in rock reliefs and coin legends in the kingdom of Elymais. Tang-e Sarvak was a sacred grove associated with coronations, so some surviving writing has a ceremonial and dynastic setting as well as an administrative one.

Is Elymaic resh the same as Parthian resh?

No; Elymaic and Parthian are related scripts, not one script. Elymaic comes from the Aramaic script used by the Achaemenid chancery. It is closely connected with other Aramaic-derived scripts, including Parthian, Mandaic, and Characenean. Coins complicate visual sorting: larger Elymaean coins resemble the stone-inscription style, while some small copper coins look closer to Parthian forms.

How Elymaic and Mandaic are related remains disputed: scholars have proposed Elymaic as Mandaic’s ancestor, descendant, or sibling tradition. When identifying an artifact, follow its script attribution rather than deciding from shape alone.

Why does Elymaic resh look different in fonts?

Historical Elymaic varies in shape. Unicode uses one representative glyph based on Tang-e Sarvak; historical Elymaic has no single standard form. Other inscriptions and coins vary, and fonts may choose one particular style.

Two genuine lookalikes are kaph and ayin. Resh ends with a shorter stroke than kaph, whose long stroke drops below the writing line. Resh’s two arcs meet at one side and often curve along the line; ayin’s smaller arc crosses the larger one.