2020050 [ARST-2020-18.1] 10001-Penn-et-al-proof-01 [version 20200220 date 20200225 10:49] page 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/17455227- bja10001 Aramaic Studies (2020) 1–18 Aramaic Studies brill.com/arst running headline abbreviated, please check Serto before Serto: Reexamining the Earliest Development of Syriac Script Michael Penn Stanford University, Stanford CA, United States mppenn@stanford.edu R. Jordan Crouser Smith University, Northampton, MA, United States jcrouser@smith.edu Philip Abbott Stanford University, Stanford CA, United States pa298@stanford.edu Abstract Scholars have traditionally categorised early Syriac manuscripts as either Estrangela or Serto. The same categories dominate the prevailing narrative of how Syriac script is thought to have developed. Most see Estrangela as the earliest strata of Syriac and Serto as a later development. More recent scholarship explores how early manuscripts sup- port neither this stark division between script styles nor a sequential development. Of particular challenge to this paradigm are a series of securely dated colophons and notes which use a script style different than the main part of the text. But previous work has looked at only five examples of this phenomenon. By expanding this investigation to 30 examples and drawing upon a recent compiled digital corpus of over 100,000 early Syriac letter forms, the present article explores how large data sets, digital analysis, and visual analytics can help one better understand the development of Aramaic scripts. Keywords Syriac – digital palaeography – Aramaic script – visual analytics – palaeography – colo- phons