Ancient South Arabian script

Ancient South Arabian script
Type	Abjad
Languages	Ge'ez, Old South Arabian
Time period	c. 9th century BC to 7th century AD
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic Ancient South Arabian script
Child systems	Ge'ez
Sister systems	Phoenician alphabet
Direction	Right-to-left
ISO 15924	Sarb, 105
Unicode alias	Old South Arabian
Unicode range	U+1BC0–U+10A7F

The ancient Yemeni alphabet (Old South Arabian ms₃nd; modern Arabic: المُسنَد‎‎ musnad) 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 Ge'ez in Dʿmt. The earliest inscriptions in the alphabet date to the 9th century BC in Akkele Guzay, Eritrea. 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 [ʃ]	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

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)

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

The Unicode block, called Old South Arabian, is U+10A60–U+10A7F.

Note that U+10A7D OLD SOUTH ARABIAN NUMBER ONE (𐩽) represents both the numeral one and a word divider.

Old South Arabian Official Unicode Consortium code 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 8.0

Gallery of some inscriptions

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

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• Photos from Military Museum of Yemen:

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See also

• Eduard Glaser
• Carl Rathjens

References

• .

External links

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