South Arabian script (musnad)
Escritura sudarábiga (musnad)
- Date
- c. 800 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Marib, Yemen
- Credited to
- Kingdoms of Saba, Ma'in, Qataban and Hadramawt
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A monumental alphabetic script of 29 consonant letters, carved in stone and bronze, used by the South Arabian kingdoms. It left tens of thousands of inscriptions on temples, law, trade and water works.
The earliest dated texts are from the 8th-7th centuries BC, but some authors propose an earlier origin (late second millennium BC). Its relation to Proto-Sinaitic and to the Phoenician alphabet is hypothetical.
What it led to
- inscriptions on the Marib dam, Sabaean temples and the incense trade
- Ethiopic (Ge'ez) script, derived from South Arabian
- everyday records on wooden sticks (zabur), the oldest texts of Arabian daily life