Old South Arabic script
| Old South Arabic script | ||
|---|---|---|
| Font | Abdschad | |
| languages | Old South Arabic language | |
| Emergence | Beginning of the 1st millennium BC Chr. | |
| Used in | today's Yemen | |
| ancestry |
Phoenician script Old South Arabic script |
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| Derived | Ethiopian script | |
| Unicode block | U + 10A60 to U + 10A7F | |
| ISO 15924 | Sarb | |
The old South Arabic script is used in southern Arabia (today's Yemen ), especially in the kingdom of Saba from the 8th century BC. Consonant alphabet with 29 characters, used in a different order from the Abyads , until the 6th century .
Emergence
It was probably created at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. From the Phoenician script and became the origin of the Ethiopian script . The Old South Arabic language was written with the Old South Arabic script . The striving of the signs for symmetry and balance is striking. Words are separated by vertical bars, numerals have been bracketed. In addition to the monumental signs shown below, which were used in stone inscriptions, italic letters were used for short inscriptions on wood.
The old South Arabic script is left-handed, but not closely related to the Arabic script .
In the early days of the South Arabian written culture , the text bustrophedon , i.e. H. written on the first line from left to right and on the second line from right to left. Only later was the spelling standardized by recording the texts in all lines from left to right.
The last known South Arabic inscription dates from the year 559. After Yemen had adopted Islam at the beginning of the 7th century , the South Arabic script was quickly replaced by the Arabic alphabet.
After the first reports on ancient inscriptions in Yemen, the scholars Wilhelm Gesenius and Emil Rödiger succeeded in deciphering the South Arabic script.
Old South Arabic inscription
Sabaean inscription
character
The old South Arabic characters show a wide range of variations; the following table shows standardized forms.
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| ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | |
| transcription | H | l | H | m | q | w | s2 (ś) | r | b | t | s1 (š) | k | n | H | s3 (s) | f | ʾ | ʿ | ḍ | G | d | G | ṭ | z | ḏ | y | ṯ | ṣ | ẓ |
| IPA | [H] | [l] | [H] | [m] | [q] | [w] | [ɬ] | [r] | [b] | [t] | [s] | [k] | [n] | [x] | [s̪] | [f] | [ʔ] | [ʕ] | [ɬʼ] | [G] | [d] | [ɣ] | [tʼ] | [z] | [ð] | [j] | [θ] | [tˢʼ] | [θʼ] |
Words were separated with the sign 
.
Numeral
The number system is very similar to the Roman one : both the powers of 10 (1, 10, 100 etc.) and their fivefold (5, 50 etc.) had their own symbols:
| 1 |
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| 10 |
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| 50 |
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| 100 |
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| 1000 |
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The numbers in between were written by adding the numbers that can be directly represented, with the tens to the right (i.e. in front of) the ones for the numbers up to 999:
17 = = 10 + 5 + 1 + 1
99 = = 50 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1
The thousands were written in two different ways: if they were not too big, the symbol was simply strung together as often as thousands were to be represented:
8000 = = 8 × 1000.
In contrast, higher thousands were represented by using for 10,000, for 50,000 and for 100,000:
31,000 = = 3 × 10,000 + 1000 (and not 1030)
40,000 = = 4 × 10,000 (and not 40)
253,000 = = 2 × 100,000 + 50,000 + 3 × 1000 (and not 3250)
Perhaps because of this ambiguity, numerals, at least in monumental inscriptions, were always clarified by the phonetically written corresponding numeral. To separate numbers from letters, digit sequences are 
surrounded by: = 16,000.
Most of the old South Arabic numerals were also letters, where = 50 is halved = 100.
literature
- Maria Höfner : Old South Arabic grammar (= Porta linguarum Orientalium . Volume 24). Leipzig 1943.
- Jacqueline Pirenne : Paléographie des Inscriptions sud-arabes, vol. 1 (Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België . Class of letters; No. 26) Brussels 1956 (not undisputed division of the old South Arabic script into paleographic phases ).
