Ancient South Arabian script
𐩣𐩯𐩬𐩵
Script type Abjad
PeriodFrom late 2nd millennium BCE to 6th century CE
DirectionRight-to-left, boustrophedon
LanguagesOld South Arabian, Ge'ez
Related scripts
Parent systemsEgyptian hieroglyphs
  • Proto-Sinaitic
    • South Semitic
      • Ancient South Arabian script
Child systemsGeʽez[1][2]
Sister systemsAncient North Arabian
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Sarb (105), ​Old South Arabian
Unicode
Unicode aliasOld South Arabian
Unicode rangeU+10A60–U+10A7F

The Ancient South Arabian script (Old South Arabian: 𐩣𐩯𐩬𐩵, romanized: ms3nd; modern Arabic: الْمُسْنَد musnad) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the late 2nd millennium BCE, and remained in use through the late sixth century CE. It is an abjad, a writing system where only consonants are obligatorily written, a trait shared with its predecessor, Proto-Sinaitic, as well as some of its sibling writing systems, including Arabic and Hebrew. It is a predecessor of the Ge'ez script, and a sibling script of the Phoenician alphabet and, through that, the modern Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabets.

The script is really two variants: the monumental and the minuscule script, the former for inscriptions, the latter scratched with wooden sticks. The scripts have a common origin but evolved into separate systems.[3]

History

The earliest instances of the Ancient South Arabian (ASA) script are painted pottery sherds from Raybun in Hadhramaut in Yemen, which are dated to the late 2nd millennium BCE.[3] It is an abjad script, meaning that only consonants are usually written in the script, with vowels inferred from context; it shares this feature both with its predecessor, the Proto-Sinaitic script, and modern Semitic languages. It is unclear precisely how and when the ASA script diverged from Proto-Sinaitic script, as inscriptions from its earliest days are rare.[3] As with these other abjads, some vowels can be indicated if necessary, by including diacritical markings, called matres lectionis.

Its mature form was reached around 800 BCE, and it remained use in more or less the same form until the 6th century CE. In those centuries, it was used to write multiple languages of the Southern Arabian peninsula and the Horn of Africa, including Sabaic, Qatabanic, Hadramautic, Minaean, Hasaitic, and Geʽez. It was eventually displaced by the modern Arabic alphabet during the early years of the spread of Islam.[4][3] The modern Arabic writing system is related to the ASA script, as both are children of the Proto-Sinaitic script, but modern Arabic derives from the Phoenician and Nabatean scripts rather than ASA.[1]

The Geʽez script is the sole extant writing system that derives from ASA.[1][2] Unlike ASA, Geʽez is an abugida; the primary characters are pairs of consonants and vowels, with each character representing a syllable. Geʽez has been used to write Amharic, Tigrinya and Tigre, as well as other languages (including various Semitic, Cushitic, Omotic, and Nilo-Saharan languages). ASA is also a sibling of the Phoenician – the ancestor of most of the modern European alphabets, such as Latin, Cyrillic and Greek.

Properties

Difference from the Arabic script

The Musnad script differs from the Arabic script, which most linguists believe developed from the Nabataean script in the fourth century AD, which in turn developed from the Aramaic script. The languages of the Southern Musnad script also differ greatly from the Northern Arabic language in terms of script, lexicon, grammar, styles, and perhaps sounds, and the letters of the script increase. The Musnad is derived from Arabic with an extra sibilant letter (some call it sāmikh) or the third sīn.[5][6]

Letters

Ancient South Arabian Letter[7] Phoneme IPA Corresponding letter in
Ancient North Arabian Ge'ez Phoenician Aramaic Arabic Hebrew
𐩠 h [h] 𐪀‎ ሀ 𐤄 𐡄 ه‎ ה‎
𐩡 l [l] 𐪁‎ ለ 𐤋 𐡋 ل‎ ל‎
𐩢 ḥ [ħ] 𐪂‎ ሐ 𐤇 𐡇 ح‎ ח‎
𐩭 ḫ [x] 𐪍‎ ኀ خ‎
𐩣 m [m] 𐪃‎ መ 𐤌 𐡌 م‎ מם‎
𐩤 q [q] 𐪄‎ ቀ 𐤒 𐡒 ق‎ ק‎
𐩥 w [w], [uː] 𐪅‎ ወ 𐤅 𐡅 و‎ ו‎
𐩧 r [r] 𐪇‎ ረ 𐤓 𐡓 ر‎ ר‎
𐩨 b [b] 𐪈‎ በ 𐤁 𐡁 ب‎ ב‎
𐩯 s³ (s) [s̪] 𐪏‎ ሰ 𐤎 𐡎 س‎ ס‎
𐩪 s¹ (š) [s] 𐪊‎ 𐤔 𐡔 שׁ‎
𐩻 ṯ [θ] 𐪛‎ 𐡔/𐡕 ث‎
𐩦 s² (ś) [ɬ] 𐪆‎ ሠ 𐡔/𐡎 ش‎ שׂ‎
𐩩 t [t] 𐪉‎ ተ 𐤕 𐡕 ت‎ ת‎
𐩫 k [k] 𐪋‎ ከ 𐤊 𐡊 ك‎ כך‎
𐩬 n [n] 𐪌‎ ነ 𐤍 𐡍 ن‎ נן‎
𐩰 f [f] 𐪐‎ ፈ 𐤐 𐡐 ف‎ פף‎
𐩱 ʾ [ʔ] 𐪑‎ አ 𐤀 𐡀 ا‎ א‎
𐩲 ʿ [ʕ] 𐪒‎ ዐ 𐤏 𐡏 ع‎ ע‎
𐩶 ġ [ɣ] 𐪖‎ غ‎
𐩮 ṣ [sˤ] 𐪎‎ ጸ 𐤑 𐡑 ص‎ צץ‎
𐩼 ẓ [θˤ] 𐪜‎ 𐡑/𐡈 ظ‎
𐩳 ḍ [ɬˤ] 𐪓‎ ፀ 𐡒/𐡏 ض‎
𐩷 ṭ [tˤ] 𐪗‎ ጠ 𐤈 𐡈 ط‎ ט‎
𐩴 g [g] 𐪔‎ ገ 𐤂 𐡂 ج‎ ג‎
𐩸 z [z] 𐪘‎ ዘ 𐤆 𐡆 ز‎ ז‎
𐩹 ḏ [ð] 𐪙‎ 𐡆/𐡃 ذ‎
𐩵 d [d] 𐪕‎ ደ 𐤃 𐡃 د‎ ד‎
𐩺 y [j], [iː] 𐪚‎ የ 𐤉 𐡉 ي‎ י‎

Numerals

Six signs are used for numbers:

1 5 10 50 100 1000
𐩽 𐩭 𐩲 𐩾 𐩣 𐩱

The sign for 50 was evidently created by removing the lower triangle from the sign for 100.[8] The sign for 1 doubles as a word separator. The other four signs double as both letters and numbers. Each of these four signs is the first letter of the name of the corresponding numeral.[8]

An additional sign (𐩿) is used to bracket numbers, setting them apart from surrounding text.[8] For example, ‏𐩿𐩭𐩽𐩽𐩿‎

These signs are used in an additive system similar to Roman numerals to represent any number (excluding zero). Two examples:

Sample numbers from one to twenty
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
𐩽 ‏𐩽𐩽‎ ‏𐩽𐩽𐩽‎ ‏𐩽𐩽𐩽𐩽‎ 𐩭 ‏𐩭𐩽‎ ‏𐩭𐩽𐩽‎ ‏𐩭𐩽𐩽𐩽‎ ‏𐩭𐩽𐩽𐩽𐩽‎ 𐩲
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
‏𐩲𐩽‎ ‏𐩲𐩽𐩽‎ ‏𐩲𐩽𐩽𐩽‎ ‏𐩲𐩽𐩽𐩽𐩽‎ ‏𐩲𐩭‎ ‏𐩲𐩭𐩽‎ ‏𐩲𐩭𐩽𐩽‎ ‏𐩲𐩭𐩽𐩽𐩽‎ ‏𐩲𐩭𐩽𐩽𐩽𐩽‎ ‏𐩲𐩲‎

Thousands are written two different ways:

Perhaps because of ambiguity, numerals, at least in monumental inscriptions, are always clarified with the numbers written out in words.

Zabūr

Zabūr, also known as "South Arabian minuscules",[9] is the name of the cursive form of the South Arabian script that was used by the Sabaeans in addition to their monumental script, or Musnad.[10]

Zabur was a writing system in ancient Yemen along with Musnad. The difference between the two is that Musnad documented historical events, meanwhile Zabur writings were used for religious scripts or to record daily transactions among ancient Yemenis. Zabur writings could be found in palimpsest form written on papyri or palm-leaf stalks.[11][12]

Unicode

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.[8]

Old South Arabian[1]
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 17.0

In modern culture

Yemeni archeologist and linguist Mutaher al-Eryani was keen to record a memorial in the Musnad script and in the Sabaean language, commemorating the renovation of the Ma’rib Dam in 1986, which was carried out at the expense of Sheikh Zayed and in conjunction with the celebration of victory in the North Yemen Civil War against the Kingdom of Yemen. The inscription was published in a scientific article written by the Frenchman Christian Robin as the last official Musnad inscription.[13]

See also

References

Citations

  1. Daniels, Peter T.; Bright, William, eds. (1996). The World's Writing Systems. Oxford University Press, Inc. pp. 89, 98, 569–570. ISBN 978-0195079937.
  2. Gragg, Gene (2004). "Ge'ez (Aksum)". In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages. Cambridge University Press. p. 431. ISBN 0-521-56256-2.
  3. Stein, Peter (2013). "Palaeography of the Ancient South Arabian script. New evidence for an absolute chronology". Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. 24 (2): 186–195. doi:10.1111/aae.12024. ISSN 0905-7196.
  4. Ibn Durayd, Ta‘līq min amāli ibn durayd, ed. al-Sanūsī, Muṣṭafā, Kuwait 1984, p. 227 (Arabic). The author purports that a poet from the Kinda tribe in Yemen who settled in Dūmat al-Ǧandal during the advent of Islam told of how another member of the Yemenite Kinda tribe who lived in that town taught the Arabic script to the Banū Qurayš in Mecca and that their use of the Arabic script for writing eventually took the place of musnad, or what was then the Sabaean script of the kingdom of Ḥimyar: "You have exchanged the musnad of the sons of Ḥimyar / which the kings of Ḥimyar were wont to write down in books."
  5. "موسوعة علوم اللغة العربية 1-10 مع الفهارس ج5 - إميل بديع يعقوب ،الدكتور - كتب Google". 2020-03-18.
  6. حبش, حسن قاسم (2020-03-18). "رحلة المصحف الشريف من الجريد الى التجليد - حسن قاسم حبش - كتب Google".
  7. Official Unicode Consortium code chart
  8. Maktari, Sultan; Mansour, Kamal (2008-01-28). "L2/08-044: Proposal to encode Old South Arabian Script" (PDF).
  9. Stein 2005.
  10. Ryckmans, Müller & ‛Abdallah 1994, p. 43.
  11. Ryckmans 1993, p. 127.
  12. S. Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, p. 70
  13. Robin, Christian Julien (1988). "Le texte de fondation en langue sabéenne de la nouvelle digue de Maʾrib, inaugurée en 1986". Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies. 18: 115–122.

References