Cursive Hebrew

Modern Hebrew, especially in informal use in Israel, is handwritten with the Ashkenazi cursive script that had developed in Central Europe by the 13th century.

Still longer texts in a cursive alphabet are furnished by the clay bowls found in Babylonia and bearing exorcisms against magical influences and evil spirits.

For instance, the Sephardi rounds off still more, and, as in Arabic, there is a tendency to run the lower lines to the left, whereas the Ashkenazi script appears cramped and disjointed.

However, since the preservation of such letters were not held to be of importance, material of this nature from the earlier times is very scarce, and as a consequence the development of the script is very hard to follow.

The following are the successive stages in the development of each letter: The Samaritans are an ethnic group descended from the Israelites and are a sister people to the Jews.

Whereas the Israelites and later Hebrews suffered a number of exoduses and deportations over the course of history, Samaritans for the most part remained in Israel since ancient times.