Short answers, pulled from the story.
Aramaic became an official lingua franca during the period from 911 to 605 BC. The Neo-Assyrian Empire adopted this language to replace Akkadian in administrative contexts.
Ulrich Friedrich Kopp finally recognized the script of the Carpentras Stele in 1821. This discovery occurred more than a century after the stele was found in the 17th century.
Western Neo-Aramaic survives only in three villages on Syria's side of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains: Maaloula, Jubb'adin, and Bakh'a. These communities were affected by destruction during the Syrian civil war.
Klaus Beyer divides history into Old Aramaic from earliest records to Middle Aramaic around 200 AD. He defines Modern Aramaic as beginning from 1200 AD onward.
Aramaic possesses a phonological palette containing twenty-five to forty distinct phonemes depending on the specific dialect being examined. The language features three basic vowel sets that remain relatively stable across variations.