The Science of Life and Death in Frankenstein

drew their wealth from trading, especially in spices. Under the Nabateans, Aramaic and Arabic were interwoven, for the kingdom’s inhabitants spoke Arabic. Nabatean became a model for the development of Arabic’s written form—many Aramaic loanwords, morphological features and literary forms found their way from the Nabateans into later Arabic. In the final chapter, Gzella discusses Aramaic today. Several Neo-Aramaic dialects survived into the modern world as local dialects used by a single town surrounded by a sea of Arabic speakers. Today, the wars and displacements of the twentieth century are leading to the extinction of these last Aramaic dialects. Work is being done to document them as speakers grow older and pass away. Despite the problems with his presentation of Jewish Aramaic in the rabbinic period, Holger Gzella has done an important service by writing this history of Aramaic, one of the most widespread and longest-lasting languages of the Middle East. Although this book needs a more robust Chapter 7—and in the meantime must be supplemented by reference to fully researched works such as The Targums: A Critical Introduction, written by myself and Bruce Chilton—it deserves a place on the linguistic and reference shelves in academic and specialist libraries.