Ancient South Arabian
- Title
- Ancient South Arabian
- Creator(s)
- Stein, Peter
- Editor(s)
- Hasselbach-Andee, Rebecca
- Date
- 2020
- Is Part Of
- A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages
- Pages
- 337-353
- Language
- eng
- Publisher
- John Wiley & Sons
- Place Published
- London
- Abstract
- Ancient South Arabian (ASA) is a conventional term to designate the languages which were spoken and written in South Arabia, the territory of present-day Yemen, between the early first millennium BCE and the late sixth century CE. Four languages are commonly subsumed under ASA: Sabaic, Minaic, Qatabanic and Hadramitic. These are named by modern scholarship after the political entities that are behind them. The four languages are quite different from a linguistic point of view. The four languages are unevenly distributed within the chronological framework of South Arabian history. First attestations of ASA textual evidence, written in Sabaic and Minaic and commonly dated to the ninth century BCE, occur in the Wadi al-Jawf in the north of Yemen. Linguistic affiliation of ASA has long been under dispute, oscillating between a classification as South Semitic (together with Ethiopic and Modern South Arabian) and as Central Semitic (with Canaanite, Aramaic and Arabic).
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