South Arabian    South Arabian

The South Arabian alphabet is thought to have developed from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet in about the 9th century BC. It is known from inscriptions found in Eritrea, Babylonia and Yemen dating from between 9th century BC and 7th century AD, and was used to write Sabaean, Qatabanian, Hadramautic, Minaean, Himyarite and proto-Ge'ez, extinct Semitic languages once spoken in southern parts of the Arabian peninsula. It is also known as the Old Yemeni alphabet or المُسند (musnad).

The South Arabian was used for monunmental inscriptions, and was also carved into wooden sticks, which were used as everyday documents. It is also know as the Old South Arabian script or Ancient South Arabian script.

Notable features

South Arabian alphabet

South Arabian alphabet

Download an script chart for South Arabian (Excel)

Sample text

Sample text in the South Arabian alphabet

Source: http://www.barnard.nl/yemen/mb88.html

Sample video about South Arabian

Links

Information about the Old/Ancient South Arabian script
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Arabian_alphabet

Ancient South Arabian Inscriptions
http://www.barnard.nl/yemen/
http://dasi.cnr.it/

Old South Arabian fonts
https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Old+South+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 last modified: 13.04.23

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