Early North Arabic script

The early North Arabic script (also Old North Arabic ) is a script found in northern and central Arabia ( Saudi Arabia , Jordan , Syria ), from the 8th century BC. Consonant alphabet with 29 characters of the early North Arabian language used up to the 6th century . The early North Arabic script is closely related to the old South Arabic script and thus belongs to the southern branch of the Semitic alphabet.

The letters are not uniform, and it is not uncommon for identical symbols to stand for different phonemes. The direction of the writing was also not uniform: the letters could be lined up as a bustrophedon or continuously from right to left. Word was separated by a line, but it was not uncommon for it to remain unmarked.

In June 2014, the font was included in the Unicode 7.0 standard as the Unicode block Old North Arabic (U + 10A80 – U + 10A9F).

literature

• MCA Macdonald: Ancient North Arabian . In: Roger D. Woodard (Ed.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge u. a. 2004, ISBN 0-521-56256-2 , pp. 488–533 (especially p. 494 ff., There references to older literature)

Web links

• Example of an inscription from al-Udhaib
• Sample inscriptions

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Unicode 7.0.0. Unicode Consortium, June 16, 2014, accessed June 17, 2014 .