Ancient South Arabian

It was originally thought that all four members of this group were dialects of one Old South Arabian language, but in the mid-twentieth century, linguist A.F.L. Beeston finally proved that they did in fact constitute independent languages.^[9]

The Old South Arabian languages were originally classified (partly on the basis of geography) as South Semitic, along with Modern South Arabian and Ethiopian Semitic;^[10] but many modern classifications place it, or at least Sabaic, within Central Semitic on the basis of verbal morphology.^[11]

Although Sabaic, Minaic, Qatabanic and Ḥaḍramitic were formerly often treated as dialects of a single Old South Arabian language, they are now usually described as separate but closely related languages. Their common affiliation is supported by shared morphological features, especially the determinate state marked by suffixed -n and related forms such as -hn, which function as a definite article.^[12][13]

At the same time, the languages differ substantially. Sabaic is especially distinctive in using h in third-person pronouns and in the causative stem, where Minaic, Qatabanic and Ḥaḍramitic generally have s¹; Sabaic also developed productive -n augmented forms of the prefix conjugation and of derived-stem infinitives.^[14] The use of -k in first and second-person forms of the suffix conjugation, attested especially in Sabaic and Minaic, has often figured in comparisons with Modern South Arabian and Ethiopian Semitic. It is not, however, generally treated as decisive proof of a South Semitic genetic subgroup; similar -k suffixes in some Yemeni Arabic dialects have been explained as contact or substrate influence from neighbouring non-Arabic languages.^[15]

The internal classification of Old South Arabian remains debated. Kottsieper and Stein have proposed that Sabaic may have a special relationship with Aramaic, setting it apart from the other Old South Arabian languages; this is best presented as a proposed interpretation rather than as a settled classification.^[16]

The Old South Arabian languages were written in the Ancient South Arabian script. Its monumental form, commonly called musnad, was used mainly for inscriptions on stone, rock and metal, while a minuscule or cursive form, often called zabūr, was used especially on wooden sticks and palm-leaf stalks for letters, legal texts and other everyday documents.^[14][13] The monumental alphabet consisted of 29 consonantal signs, broadly corresponding to the reconstructed consonant inventory of Proto-Semitic. It belongs to the early West Semitic alphabetic tradition and later served as the basis for the Ethiopic script.^[12][17]

The latest securely dated Sabaic inscription was written in 559 CE; more generally, Old South Arabian epigraphic documentation extends from the early first millennium BCE to the late sixth century CE.^[12][18]

Old South Arabian is conventionally used for four principal inscriptional languages: Sabaic, Minaic or Madhabic, Qatabanic, and Ḥaḍramitic. Earlier scholarship often treated these as dialects of a single Old South Arabian language, but they are now usually described as separate, closely related languages. The dates below are approximate, since the chronology of the earliest inscriptions remains debated; where relevant, they follow the commonly used long chronology.^[19][14]

• Sabaic: the language of the kingdom of Sabaʾ and, later, the main written language of the Ḥimyarite period. It is by far the best-attested Old South Arabian language, with more than 5,500 published inscriptions. Sabaic inscriptions are concentrated in Yemen, especially around Maʾrib and the central highlands, but Sabaic material is also known from Ethiopia.^[14][20]
  • Early or Old Sabaic: attested from the early first millennium BCE, especially from Maʾrib and the Jawf. The earliest phase is often dated to the eighth century BCE under the long chronology, though some material may be earlier.^[19][14]
  • Middle Sabaic: roughly from the third century BCE to the mid-fourth century CE. This is the best-documented period of Sabaic. Its principal regional varieties are usually described as North, Central and South Sabaic.^[21]
    • North Sabaic, especially Amiritic or Haramic: a northern variety attested mainly in the Jawf. It was previously often called Haramic, but Stein treats the material as Amiritic and notes strong North Arabian influence.^[22]
    • Central Sabaic: the relatively homogeneous written variety of the Sabaean heartland, often used as the standard basis for descriptions of Sabaic grammar.^[21]
    • South Sabaic: the southern highland varieties associated especially with Ḥimyar and Radmān. Radmanite is therefore better treated as a South Sabaic variety rather than as a Qatabanic variety.^[21][19]
  • Late Sabaic: from the mid-fourth to the sixth century CE. It developed mainly from South Sabaic, especially the written language associated with Ḥimyar, and became dominant after the political rise of the Ḥimyarites.^[14][19]

• Minaic or Madhabic: the language of the Minaean kingdom and related inscriptions from the Jawf. The historically neutral term Madhabic is sometimes used, especially for early material from the Wadi Madhāb area before the rise of the kingdom of Maʿīn. About 1,600 Minaic inscriptions are known, mainly from the Jawf, but also from the Minaean trading colony at Dedān/al-ʿUlā, from Egypt, and from Delos. Minaic ceased to be written after the fall of the kingdom of Maʿīn at the end of the second century BCE and was replaced in the Jawf by Sabaic.^[14][19]

• Qatabanic: the language of the kingdom of Qatabān, especially the area of Wadi Bayḥān and Wadi Ḥarīb southeast of Maʾrib. More than 2,000 Qatabanic inscriptions are known. The documentation begins in the first millennium BCE and continues until the disintegration of the Qatabanian kingdom in the second century CE.^[14][19]
  • Awsanite or Awsānian: a small and poorly attested inscriptional corpus associated with the kingdom of Awsān. It is normally treated close to Qatabanic or marginal Qatabanic material, but because the surviving corpus is small its status should not be presented as that of a well-attested fifth Old South Arabian language.^[23]

• Ḥaḍramitic or Hadramautic: the language of the kingdom of Ḥaḍramawt. It is attested mainly from the region of Shabwa, Raybūn and the Ḥaḍramawt, with some material also known from outside South Arabia, including Delos. About 1,500 texts had been published by Stein's survey, but many are fragments, so Ḥaḍramitic remains the least well documented of the four principal languages for linguistic analysis. It is attested from the first millennium BCE until the third century CE, with some later individual instances.^[14][19]

Old South Arabian is known almost entirely from inscriptions. The documentation falls into two main groups: monumental inscriptions, usually called musnad, and minuscule or cursive texts, usually called zabūr. The monumental script was used mainly on rock surfaces, stone blocks, architectural elements, bronze tablets and other durable objects, while the cursive script was used especially on wooden sticks and palm-leaf stalks.^[14][19]

More than 10,000 monumental Old South Arabian inscriptions have been published, but many of them are short name graffiti, fragments or other brief texts. Fewer than 3,000 are substantial enough to provide extensive linguistic evidence. The largest formal genres are dedicatory inscriptions and building inscriptions; legal texts, commemorative texts and other official records are less frequent. Despite their formulaic character, dedicatory and building inscriptions can contain long historical or narrative passages.^[14]

The monumental inscriptions are generally formal in style and are often written in the third person. Their main categories include:

1. dedicatory inscriptions, often giving the circumstances of a dedication;
2. building inscriptions, recording construction works and their patrons;
3. legal and administrative texts;
4. commemorative inscriptions;
5. short graffiti, especially personal-name graffiti;
6. inscriptions on everyday objects.

No substantial body of Old South Arabian literary texts, such as myths or epics, has survived. If such literature existed in written form, it is not represented in the known corpus.^[19]

The wooden-stick and palm-leaf documents form a separate documentary tradition. They are written in a cursive form of the Ancient South Arabian script and preserve more everyday types of writing, including letters, legal deeds, business records, instructions, settlements, writing exercises and texts connected with ritual practice.^[24] Nearly 900 texts in Sabaic and Minaic had been published by 2024.^[24] Because these texts often contain first and second-person forms, informal formulae and vocabulary not otherwise known from monumental inscriptions, they are especially important for the study of everyday language, although many remain difficult to interpret.^[19]

Because Old South Arabian is written almost entirely in a consonantal script, its phonology can only be reconstructed in part. The following table gives the usual consonant inventory as reconstructed from the script and from comparison with other Semitic languages. The phonetic values of some signs, especially the sibilants and emphatic consonants, remain uncertain.^[25][14]

The traditional transcription distinguishes three non-emphatic sibilants, conventionally written s¹/s, s²/š and s³/ś. Their exact pronunciation is disputed; the table therefore gives the conventional notation rather than treating the IPA values as certain. In spoken reading, Old South Arabian is often pronounced by analogy with Classical Arabic, but that does not necessarily reflect its ancient pronunciation.^[25]

Several sound changes are visible in the written record. In Ḥaḍramitic, for example, there is evidence for changes such as ʿ > ʾ, ẓ > ṣ and ṯ > s³. In Late Sabaic, s¹ and s³ merged graphically. As in other Semitic languages, n could assimilate to a following consonant, as in forms such as ʾnfs¹ “souls” beside ʾfs¹.^[25][14]

Because the script does not normally write vowels, the vowel system is poorly known. Transcriptions of Old South Arabian names in Akkadian and Greek suggest the vowels a, i and u, as in other Semitic languages, but vocalised forms used in modern scholarship are often partly hypothetical.^[25]

European scholars began to decipher the Ancient South Arabian script in the first half of the nineteenth century. Emil Rödiger had already reproduced an alphabet of the “Himyarite” script from an Arabic manuscript in 1837. In 1841, Rödiger and Wilhelm Gesenius independently published attempts at decipherment; Rödiger’s readings were in several respects closer to the later accepted values, partly because he made greater use of alphabet lists preserved in Arabic manuscript tradition.^[26][27]

The corpus grew rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century. Joseph Halévy’s journey in Yemen in 1869–1870 and Eduard Glaser’s four journeys between 1882 and 1894 brought large numbers of copies, squeezes and inscriptions to European collections. This material made possible the first broader attempts to arrange the texts historically and linguistically, including Fritz Hommel’s 1893 selection of South Arabian texts and grammatical sketch.^[28][29]

In the early twentieth century, Nikolaus Rhodokanakis and other Semitists made important advances in the grammatical interpretation of Sabaic and the other Old South Arabian languages. Later work, especially by A. F. L. Beeston, Walter W. Müller, Jacques Ryckmans, Christian Julien Robin, Norbert Nebes, Peter Stein and Alessandra Avanzini, refined the classification of the languages, the chronology of the inscriptions and the interpretation of the monumental corpus.^[30][31]

A separate field of research opened in the second half of the twentieth century with the discovery and decipherment of wooden-stick and palm-leaf documents written in the cursive or minuscule South Arabian script, usually called zabūr. These texts include letters, legal deeds, business documents, writing exercises and records connected with ritual practice, and they preserve forms of everyday writing that differ from the formal style of monumental inscriptions.^[32][33]

Recent research has also been shaped by digital corpora. The Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions and related projects have made large parts of the Old South Arabian corpus searchable, while the publication of the Bavarian State Library’s wooden-stick collection has greatly expanded access to the minuscule texts.^[34][35]

• Ancient North Arabian
• Old Arabic
• Undeciphered -k language of ancient Yemen
• Modern South Arabian languages