South Arabian alphabet

The ancient Yemeni alphabet (also known as musnad المُسند) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet in about the 9th century BC. It was used for writing the Yemeni Old South Arabic languages of the Sabaean, Qatabanian, Hadramautic, Minaean, Himyarite, and proto-Ge'ez (or proto-Ethiosemitic) in Dʿmt. The earliest inscriptions in the alphabet date to the 9th century BC in Akkele Guzay, Eritrea^[1] and in the 8th century BC, found in Babylonia and in Yemen. There are no vowels, instead using the mater lectionis to mark them.

Its mature form was reached around 500 BC, and its use continued until the 7th century AD, including Old North Arabian inscriptions in variants of the alphabet, when it was displaced by the Arabic alphabet. In Ethiopia it evolved later into the Ge'ez alphabet, which, with added symbols throughout the centuries, has been used to write Amharic, Tigrinya and Tigre, as well as other languages (including various Semitic, Cushitic, and Nilo-Saharan languages).

[edit] Zabur script

Zabur is the name of the cursive form of the South Arabian script that was used by the ancient Yemenis (Sabaeans) in addition to their monumental script, or musnad (see, e.g., Ryckmans, J., Müller, W. W., and ‛Abdallah, Yu., Textes du Yémen Antique inscrits sur bois. Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 1994 (Publications de l'Institut Orientaliste de Louvain, 43)).

The cursive zabur script—also known as "South Arabian minuscules"^[2]—was used by the ancient Yemenis to inscribe everyday documents on wooden sticks in addition to the rock-cut monumental musnad letters displayed below.

[edit] Sign inventory

(epigraphic) Old Yemeni alphabet
Character Transcription IPA	h [h]	l [l]	ḥ [ħ]	m [m]	q [q]	w [w]	s2 [ɬ]	r [r]	b [b]	t [t]	s1 [s]	k [k]	n [n]	ḫ [x]	s3 [s̪]	f [f]	ʾ [ʔ]	ʿ [ʕ]	ḍ [ɬˤ]	g [ɡ]	d [d]	ġ [ɣ]	ṭ [tˤ]	z [z]	ḏ [ð]	y [j]	ṯ [θ]	ṣ [sˤ]	ẓ [θˤ]
Other transcriptions	ś,š		š,s		s,ś

By shape
Character Transcription IPA	r [r]	ʿ [ʕ]	w [w]	q [q]	y [j]	ṯ [θ]	ṣ [tsˤ]	ẓ [θˤ]	h [h]	ḥ [ħ]	ḫ [x]	ʾ [ʔ]	s1 [s]	k [k]	ġ [ɣ]	b [b]	n [n]	g [ɡ]	l [l]	m [m]	s2 [ɬ]	s3 [s̪]	t [t]	f [f]	z [z]	d [d]	ḏ [ð]	ḍ [ɬˤ]	ṭ [tˤ]
	Circle	Y	Π	Vertical	Diagonal	Box

South Arabian inscription addressed to the Sabaean "national" god Almaqah

[edit] Properties

• It is usually written from right to left but can also be written from left to right. When written from left to right the characters are flipped horizontally (see the photo).
• The spacing or separation between words is done with a vertical bar mark (|).
• Letters in words are not connected together.
• It does not implement any diacritical marks (dots, etc.), differing in this respect from the modern Arabic alphabet.

[edit] Unicode

Old South Arabian was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2009 with the release of version 5.2.

The Unicode block for Old South Arabian is U+10A60–U+10A7F:

[edit] Gallery of some inscriptions

• Photos from National Museum of Yemen (Sana'a):

• Photos from Military Museum of Yemen (Sana'a):

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Stein, Peter (2005). "The Ancient South Arabian Minuscule Inscriptions on Wood: A New Genre of Pre-Islamic Epigraphy". Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap "Ex Oriente Lux" 39: 181–199. 
• Beeston, A.F.L. (1962). "Arabian Sibilants". Journal of Semitic Studies 7 (2): 222–233. doi:10.1093/jss/7.2.222. 

[edit] External links

• Ancient scripts on South Arabian
• SI
• Omniglot's entry on South Arabian

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