South Arabian alphabet

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Epigraphic South Arabian
Type	Abjad
Spoken languages	Ge'ez, Old South Arabian
Time period	ca. 9th c. BC to 7th c. AD
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic Epigraphic South Arabian
Child systems	Ge'ez
Sister systems	Phoenician alphabet
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The ancient South Arabian 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, Hadrami (Ḥaḍramī), 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. 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).

Contents 1 Zabur Script 2 Sign inventory 3 Properties 4 Notes 5 References 6 External links

[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, 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 South Arabian 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 [ɬʼ]	g [g]	d [d]	ġ [ɣ]	ṭ [tʼ]	z [z]	ḏ [ð]	y [j]	ṯ [θ]	ṣ [sʼ]	ẓ [θʼ]
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 [tˢʼ]	ẓ [θʼ]	h [h]	ḥ [ħ]	ḫ [x]	ʾ [ʔ]	s1 [s]	k [k]	ġ [ɣ]	b [b]	n [n]	g [g]	l [l]	m [m]	s2 [ɬ]	s3 [s̪]	t [t]	f [f]	z [z]	d [d]	ḏ [ð]	ḍ [ɬʼ]	ṭ [tʼ]
	Circle								Y			Π					Vert			Diagonal							Box

History of the alphabet Middle Bronze Age 19 c. BCE Ugaritic 15 c. BCE Proto-Canaanite 15 c. BCE Phoenician 12 c. BCE Paleo-Hebrew 10 c. BCE Samaritan 6 c. BCE Aramaic 8 c. BCE Kharoṣṭhī 6 c. BCE Brāhmī & Indic 6 c. BCE Brahmic abugidas Devanagari 13 c. CE Hebrew 3 c. BCE Thaana 4 c. BCE Pahlavi 3 c. BCE Avestan 4 c. CE Palmyrene 2 c. BCE Syriac 2 c. BCE Sogdian 2 c. BCE Orkhon (Old Turkic) 6 c. CE Old Hungarian ca. 650 Old Uyghur Mongolian 1204 Nabataean 2 c. BCE Arabic 4 c. CE Mandaic 2 c. CE Greek 8 c. BCE Etruscan 8 c. BCE Latin 7 c. BCE Runic 2 c. CE Coptic 3 c. CE Gothic 3 c. CE Armenian 405 Georgian (disputed) ca. 430 CE Glagolitic 862 Cyrillic ca. 940 Paleohispanic 7 c. BCE Epigraphic South Arabian 9 c. BCE Ge’ez 5–6 c. BCE Meroitic 3 c. BCE Ogham 4 c. CE Hangul 1443 Zhuyin (Bopomofo) 1913 Complete writing systems genealogy This box: view • talk • edit

[edit] Properties

• It can be written from right to left or from left to right. When writing 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.) in the modern Arabic alphabet.

[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 Siblants". Journal of Semitic Studies 7: 222–233. doi:10.1093/jss/7.2.222. 

[edit] External links

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

v • d • e Writing systems Overview History of writing · History of the alphabet · Graphemes Lists Writing systems · Languages by writing system / by first written account · Undeciphered writing systems · Inventors of writing systems Types Featural alphabets · Alphabets · Abjads · Alphasyllabaries / Abugidas · Syllabaries · Ideogrammic · Pictographic · Logographic

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