Hatran Letter Samekh

It is the Hatran samekh, a letter for the s sound. It records a consonant inside a Hatran Aramaic word, rather than standing for a picture or idea on its own.

Hatran was a right-to-left Aramaic writing system used around Hatra in northern Mesopotamia. The earliest dated evidence is 98–97 BCE, and the tradition continued until around 240 CE. Writers used it for graffiti and inscriptions on memorials, offerings, tombs, and buildings.

Hatran samekh derives from Semkath in Imperial Aramaic, an earlier Aramaic writing tradition. Related letter forms also appear in Phoenician, Hebrew, Syriac, and Nabataean scripts; each is a distinct script, so the characters are not interchangeable.

Why does 𐣮 look like a box?

A blank box usually means the font cannot display Hatran. Hatran text runs right to left, and its digital appearance depends on font coverage. Noto Sans Hatran is a dedicated font; software may show an empty box or fallback glyph when the selected font lacks this character.

Inscriptions vary in word spacing, and some letter pairs touch or join into one written shape, called a ligature. There is no single fixed rule for these forms.