Blackwell Reference Online

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The principal member of the southern branch of south Arabian consonant scripts. Sabaic (also Sabaean) is epigraphically attested in numerous inscriptions of the ancient cultures of south-west Arabia going back to the middle of the first millennium bce . The script is linear and predominantly angular and symmetric in appearance ( table 1 ). The direction on most monuments is typically from right to left, but some of the most ancient inscriptions are B oustrophedon . The origin of this script and its relationship with north Semitic scripts are obscure, but like those of north Semitic the 29 letters of the Sabaic script represent Cs only. The script has no means of V indication. A conspicuous feature of the script is the four graphemes for different s sounds. Their phonetic characteristics have been tentatively described as follows: (1) a voiceless palato-alveolar central fricative; (2) a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative; (3) a voiceless alveolar central fricative; and (4) an emphatic velar fricative. (As is common among Arabists, the underdot is used in table 1 to represent emphatic Cs.) In Arabia, the Sabaic script fell into disuse in the sixth century ce . During the final centuries of the first millennium bce , colonists from south-west Arabia began to settle in Abyssinia. Their language, known as Ge'ez (South Arabic ‘emigrant’), which became the language of the Ethiopic ... log in or subscribe to read full text