South Arabian alphabet

Epigraphic South Arabian
Type	Abjad
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
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 (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, Hadramautic, 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. 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 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).

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, Belgium, 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 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

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

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[1] Unicode.org chart (PDF)
	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
U+10A6x	Wikimedia Foundation. 2010. Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР? 1894 in South Africa Cour des Comptes Look at other dictionaries: South Semitic alphabet —       any of a group of minor scripts originating in the Arabian (Arabia, history of) Peninsula in about 1000 BC, possibly related to the writing system used in the Sinaitic inscriptions. These scripts, most of which were used only in the Arabian …   Universalium Old South Arabian — Geographic distribution: Yemen Linguistic classification: Afro Asiatic Semitic South Western …   Wikipedia alphabet — /al feuh bet , bit/, n. 1. the letters of a language in their customary order. 2. any system of characters or signs with which a language is written: the Greek alphabet. 3. any such system for representing the sounds of a language: the phonetic… …   Universalium Ancient North Arabian — Spoken in Arabia Extinct marginalized by Classical Arabic from the 7th century Language family Afro Asiatic Semitic …   Wikipedia Ge'ez alphabet — Infobox Writing system name=Ge ez abugida type=Abugida languages=Ethiopian Semitic languages (e.g. Ge ez, Amharic, Tigrinya, Tigre, Harari, etc.), Blin, Me en, formerly Oromo time=5th 6th c. BC to the present (abjad until ca. 330 AD) fam1=Proto… …   Wikipedia Nabataean alphabet — Nabataean Type Abjad Languages Nabataean language Time period 2nd century BC to 4th century AD Parent systems Proto Sinaitic alphabet …   Wikipedia Proto-Canaanite alphabet — Infobox Writing system name=Proto Canaanite alphabet type=Abjad languages= Canaanite languages time=ca. 1400 BC to 1050 BC fam1=Egyptian hieroglyphs fam2=Proto Sinaitic children=Phoenician alphabet Paleo Hebrew alphabet Aramaic alphabet Greek… …   Wikipedia History of the alphabet — The history of the alphabet begins in Ancient Egypt, more than a millennium into the history of writing. The first pure alphabet emerged around 2000 BCE to represent the language of Semitic workers in Egypt (see Middle Bronze Age alphabets), and… …   Wikipedia Arabic alphabet — Infobox Writing system name=Arabic abjad type=Abjad languages= Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, Baloch, Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Malay (limited usage) and others. time=400 CE to the present fam1=Proto Canaanite fam2=Phoenician fam3=Aramaic fam4=Nabataean… …   Wikipedia Phoenician alphabet — Infobox Writing system name=Phoenician alphabet type=Abjad languages=Phoenician time=Began 1050 BC, and gradually died out during the Hellenistic period as its evolved forms replaced it fam1=Egyptian hieroglyphs fam2=Proto Sinaitic fam3=Proto… …   Wikipedia 18+ © Academic, 2000-2024 Contact us: Technical Support, Advertising Dictionaries export, created on PHP, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, MODx. Mark and share Search through all dictionaries Translate… Search Internet Share the article and excerpts Direct link … Do a right-click on the link above and select “Copy Link”