South Arabian alphabet

Epigraphic South Arabian
Type	Abjad
Languages	Ge'ez, Old South Arabian
Time period	c. 9th century BC to 7th century AD
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic Epigraphic South Arabian
Child systems	Ge'ez
Sister systems	Phoenician alphabet
ISO 15924	Sarb, 105
Direction	Right-to-left
Unicode alias	Old South Arabian
Unicode range	U+1BC0–U+10A7F
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

The ancient Yemeni alphabet (Old South Arabian m₃nd :modern Arabic المُسنَد) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet in about the 9th century BC. It was used for writing the Old South Arabian languages of the Sabaic, Qatabanic, Hadramautic, Minaic (or Madhabic), Himyaritic, 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 and in the 10th century BC 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 6th century AD, including Old North Arabian inscriptions in variants of the alphabet, when it was displaced by the Arabic alphabet. In Ethiopia and Eritrea 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).

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

Zabūr script

Zabūr 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 zabūr script—also known as "South Arabian minuscules"—was used by the ancient Yemenis to inscribe everyday documents on wooden sticks in addition to the rock-cut monumental musnad letters displayed above. As yet only about one thousand such texts have been discovered, of which perhaps some 26 have been published; this is partly due to the difficulty of reading the minuscule script.

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

History of the alphabet Egyptian hieroglyphs 32 c. BC Proto-Sinaitic alphabet 19 c. BC Ugaritic 15 c. BC Proto-Canaanite 14 c. BC Phoenician 12 c. BC Paleo-Hebrew 10 c. BC Samaritan 6 c. BC Aramaic 8 c. BC Kharoṣṭhī 4 c. BC Brāhmī 4 c. BC Brahmic family (see) e.g. Devanagari 13 c. AD Hebrew 3 c. BC Thaana 4 c. BC Pahlavi 3 c. BC Avestan 4 c. AD Palmyrene 2 c. BC Syriac 2 c. BC Sogdian 2 c. BC Orkhon (Old Turkic) 6 c. AD Old Hungarian ca. 650 Old Uyghur Mongolian 1204 hh Nabataean 2 c. BC Arabic 4 c. AD N'Ko 20 c. AD Mandaic 2 c. AD Greek 8 c. BC Etruscan 8 c. BC Latin 7 c. BC Runic 2 c. AD Ogham 4 c. AD Coptic 3 c. AD Gothic 3 c. AD Armenian 405 Georgian ca. 430 AD Glagolitic 862 Cyrillic ca. 940 Old Permic 1372 Paleohispanic (semi-syllabic) 7 c. BC Epigraphic South Arabian 9 c. BC Ge’ez 5–6 c. BC Hieratic 32 c. BC Demotic 7 c. BC Meroitic 3 c. BC Kana (from Chinese) 8 c. AD Hangul (partly from Brahmic) 1443 Cherokee (partly from Latin and Greek) c. 1820 Vai (origin unknown, possibly from Cherokee) c. 1830 Zhuyin (a.k.a. Bopomofo, from Chinese) 1913 Yi Script (origin unknown) after the 1970s became syllabic

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.

Unicode

Main article: Old South Arabian (Unicode block)

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:

Old South Arabian Unicode.org chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+10A6x

𐩠

𐩡

𐩢

𐩣

𐩤

𐩥

𐩦

𐩧

𐩨

𐩩

𐩪

𐩫

𐩬

𐩭

𐩮

𐩯

U+10A7x

𐩰

𐩱

𐩲

𐩳

𐩴

𐩵

𐩶

𐩷

𐩸

𐩹

𐩺

𐩻

𐩼

𐩽

𐩾

𐩿

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 6.1

Gallery of some inscriptions

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

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

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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. 
• Stein, Peter (2010). Die altsüdarabischen Minuskelinschriften auf Holzstäbchen aus der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in München. 
• Beeston, A.F.L. (1962). "Arabian Sibilants". Journal of Semitic Studies 7 (2): 222–233. doi:10.1093/jss/7.2.222. 

External links

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