Hatran letter beth

Enter U+108E1 in a Unicode-aware app with a font that supports Hatran.

What does 𐣡 mean?

It writes the consonant conventionally transliterated with Latin b.

Hatran beth is the local form of the older Aramaic Bēth letter. The surviving Hatran inscriptions are dated from 98–97 BCE to circa 241 CE. Hatran developed in northern Mesopotamia from Imperial Aramaic. Nabataean, Palmyrene, Syriac and Hebrew preserve related letter traditions; their beths are historically connected, but each belongs to its own script.

Hatran inscriptions include graffiti, building texts, dedications to statues and gods, funerary texts, and rules about temples and property. One inscription from Hatra is written in both Greek and Hatran, showing the city's multilingual religious setting. A dedication formula wishing life to a named person also appears in Greek in eastern inscriptions and was later expanded for Christian use. The settings and audiences changed; beth remained a consonant letter.

Why does 𐣡 join the next letter?

It can form a historical ligature with a following letter. A ligature is a joined written form. In inscriptions, beth touches following letters transliterated z, l, n, r or sh, but no rule requires the join.

Hatran is written horizontally from right to left. Because joining is inconsistent, the same encoded sequence may look connected in one font and separate in another. A missing glyph or incorrect text direction can also make the display look broken without changing the character.