Sabaic

Sabaic
Native toYemen
RegionArabian Peninsula
Extinct6th century
Ancient South Arabian
Language codes
ISO 639-3xsa
xsa
Glottologsaba1279
Votive stele with Sabaic inscription addressed to the main Sabaean deity Almaqah, mentioning five other South Arabian gods, two reigning sovereigns and two governors: "Ammī'amar son of Ma'dīkarib dedicated to Almaqah Ra'suhumū. With 'Athtar, with Almaqah, with dhāt-Ḥimyam, with dhât-Ba'dân, with Waddum, with Karib'īl, with Sumhu'alī, with 'Ammīrayam and with Yadhrahmalik." Alabaster, c. 700 BC, Yemen, area of Ma'rib (?).

Sabaic, sometimes referred to as Sabaean, was a Sayhadic language that was spoken between c. 1000 BC and the 6th century AD by the Sabaeans. It was used as a written language by some other peoples of the ancient civilization of South Arabia, including the Ḥimyarites, Ḥashidites, Ṣirwāḥites, Humlanites, Ghaymānites, and Radmānites.[1] Sabaic belongs to the South Arabian Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family.[2] Sabaic is distinguished from the other members of the Sayhadic group by its use of h to mark the third person and as a causative prefix; all of the other languages use s1 in those cases. Therefore, Sabaic is called an h-language and the others s-languages.[3] Numerous other Sabaic inscriptions have also been found dating back to the Sabean colonization of Africa.[4][5]

Sabaic is very similar to Arabic and the languages may have been mutually intelligible.[6]

  1. ^ Korotayev, Andrey (1995). Ancient Yemen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-922237-1.
  2. ^ Kogan & Korotayev 1997.
  3. ^ Nebes, Norbert; Stein, Peter (2008). "Ancient South Arabian". In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.). The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia (PDF). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 145–178. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511486890. ISBN 9780511486890.
  4. ^ The Athenaeum. J. Lection. 1894. p. 88.
  5. ^ Radner, Karen; Moeller, Nadine; Potts, Daniel T. (2023-04-07). The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East: Volume V: the Age of Persia. Oxford University Press. p. 353. ISBN 978-0-19-068766-3.
  6. ^ Robin, C. J. (2010). Langues et écritures. In A. Al‐Ghabban (Ed.), Routes d’Arabie. Editions du musée du Louvre. Pp. 123–124.

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