North Arabian

Ancient North Arabian is the collective name for a group of scripts, and possibly a language or group of languages, that were used in north and central Arabia and southern Syria from about the 8th Century BC until the 4th century AD. It is thought that the Ancient North Arabic scripts developed from, or shared a common ancestor with the Ancient South Arabian script.

Varieties of Ancient North Arabian scripts, and possibly languages, include:

Dadanitic, which was used in the oasis of Dadan in what is now the northwest of Saudi Arabia. It had the most developed scribal tradition.
Dumaitic, which was used in the oasis formerly known as Dūma (now Dumat Al-Jandal and al-Jawf) in northern Saudi Arabia.
Hasaitic, which appears in inscriptions in the oasis of Al-Hasa in the northeast of Saudi Arabia and a few other places.
Hismaic, which is known from inscriptions carved mainly by nomads in the Ḥismā desert in southern Jordan and northwestern Saudi Arabia.
Safaitic, which was used by nomads in the deserts of southern Syria, northeastern Jordan, and northern Saudi Arabia. It also appears in texts from western Iraq, Lebanon and Pompei in Italy.
Taymanitic, which was used in the oasis of Tayma in the northwestern Saudi Arabia.
Thamudic - this name is used to refer to inscriptions in uncatagorized and unnamed found between southern Syria and Yemen.

Notable features

Type of writing system: abjad / consonant alphabet
Writing direction: usually right to left in horizontal lines
Script family: Proto-Sinaitic, Phoenician, South Semitic, Ancient North Arabian
Used to write: Old Arabic, Dadanitic, Tamanitic, and possibly other languages

North Arabian alphabet (Dadanitic)

North Arabian alphabet (Dadanitic

Download an script chart for North Arabian (Excel)

Sample text in Dadanitic

Sample text in North Arabian

Source: https://mnamon.sns.it/

Transliteration

ʿbdḫrg bn Flh Zdḏġbt bn(y) h-
kfr l-h w-l wrṯ-h h-kfr ḏ-hkll-h
w-ʾḫḏ h-mṯbrn s¹nt ṯtn l-Tlmy bn H-
(nʾs¹)

Translation

ʿbdḫrg son of Flh (from the family) Zdḏġbt built this
tomb for himself and his descendants, the tomb that he completed as a whole;
and he took possession of these two sepulchral chambers, in the second year of Tlmy son of H-
nʾs¹.

Links

Information about the Old/Ancient North Arabian script
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_North_Arabian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dadanitic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasaitic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hismaic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safaitic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taymanitic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thamudic

Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia
https://krc.web.ox.ac.uk/article/ociana
https://mnamon.sns.it/

Old North Arabian fonts
https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Old+North+Arabian

Consonant alphabets (Abjads)

Ancient Berber, Arabic, Aramaic, Chorasmian, Elymaic, Hatran, Hebrew, Manichaean, Nabataean, North Arabian, Pahlavi, Palmyrene, Parthian, Phoenician, Paleo-Hebrew, Proto-Sinaitic / Proto-Canaanite, Psalter, Punic, Sabaean, Samaritan, Sogdian, South Arabian, Syriac, Tifinagh, Ugaritic

Other writing systems

Page created: 03.03.23. Last modified: 26.08.24

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