South Arabian alphabet

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 dialects of the Sabaean, Qatabanian, Hadrami (Ḥaḍramī), Minaean, Himyarite, and proto-Ge'ez (or proto-Ethiosemitic) in D`mt. 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 Notes 4 References 5 External links

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.

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 [tˢʼ]	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 (see Brahmic abugidas below) Hebrew 3 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 Georgian (disputed) ca. 430 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 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 Brahmic-derived abugidas Northern Brāhmīc Gupta 5 c. BCE Mithilakshar 203 CE Siddhaṃ ca. 600 Tibetan ca. 650 ’Phagspa 1269 Lepcha 1700 Limbu 1740 Nāgarī ca. 750 Eastern Nāgarī Bengali ca. 1050 Assamese ca. 1050 Oriya ca. 1100 Devanāgarī ca. 1200 Ranjana ca. 1100 Newari ca. 1150 Moḍī ca. 1600 Gujarati ca. 1600 Cree 1841 Carrier 1885 Inuktitut 1870 Blackfoot 19 c. Sayisi Śāradā 770 Laṇḍā 10 c. Old Kashmiri Gurmukhī 1539 Takri Bhujimol (Old Nepal) 10 c. Ranjana 12 c. Soyombo 17 c. Prachalit Nepal Southern Brāhmīc Tamil-Brahmi 5 c. BCE Vatteluttu 4 c. BCE Pallava 6 c. CE Grantha 6 c. Sinhala 7 c. Tamil 8 c. CE Saurashtra 20 c. Malayalam 12 c. Tulu 15 c. Old Kawi 775 Balinese Javanese 9 c. Mon 9 c. Burmese 1050 Khmer 9 c. Thai 1283 Lao ca. 1350 Kadamba 5 c. Old Kannada 9 c. Kannada 16 c. Bhattiprolu Script ca. 400 BCE Telugu 16 c. Kalinga 6 c. CE Complete genealogy This box: view • talk • edit

Notes

1. ^ Fattovich, Rodolfo, "Akkälä Guzay" in von Uhlig, Siegbert, ed. Encylopaedia Aethiopica: A-C. Weissbaden: Otto Harrassowitz KG, 2003, p.169.
2. ^ Stein 2005.

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. 

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 Alphabets · Abjads · Abugidas · Syllabaries · Ideogrammic · Pictographic · Logographic

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