Elymaic letter waw

Use Unicode-aware input with Elymaic support.

Enter U+10FE5 through a Unicode-aware input method in a text editor or code; Latin w is only the scholarly transliteration. A font must also include Elymaic to display the character.

Historical Elymaic letterforms vary, so fonts may draw waw differently. If it appears as a box, the selected font has no usable Elymaic glyph.

What does Elymaic waw represent?

It is a consonant letter, conventionally transliterated as w.

Elymaic is written from right to left, and its letters do not join. Read waw as part of the surrounding word.

Where did Elymaic writing come from?

It developed from Aramaic writing used by Achaemenid officials.

Aramaic is a language; its script was used in the administration of the ancient Achaemenid Empire. Graffiti at Tang-e Chilau may preserve a transitional stage from the first century BCE or earlier. The main surviving stone corpus dates from the first through third centuries CE.

Local administration also used Elymaic to write standard Achaemenid Aramaic. Public examples include dynastic rock inscriptions at Tang-e Sarvak and Tang-e Butan; Tang-e Sarvak was a coronation grove. Elymaic also appears on Arsacid-period coins: tetradrachm lettering resembles stone styles, while some small copper issues resemble Parthian forms. The script is related to Parthian, Mandaic, and Characenean writing, and is closest to Parthian and Mandaic. The direction of its relationship to Mandaic is disputed: Mandaic has been proposed as Elymaic's ancestor, sibling script, or descendant.