ABSTRACT
Syriac's emergence as a literary language was stimulated on the one hand by a multicultural Semitic, Greek and Iranian environment, and on the other by the demands made of the language in the context of the spread of Christianity. Perhaps the most characteristic survival of pre-Christian Edessa is that of the mosaics, mostly funerary mosaics set on the floors of tomb-chambers. The presence of Greek loans in the early Syriac inscriptions and parchments would in general be an indicator of Greek cultural influence on pre-Christian Edessa and its language. There is also the famous inscription on the pillar on the Urfa citadel dedicated to a queen of Edessa. If Greek had been at all prominent in Edessa the Greek text of the gospels would have sufficed, as it did in Antioch.
