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Sabaean language
Sabaean (Sabaic), also sometimes incorrectly known as Ḥimyarite (Himyaritic), was an Old South Arabian language spoken in Yemen from c. 1000 BC to the 6th century AD, by the Sabaeans; it was used as a written language by some other peoples (''sha‘b''s) of Ancient Yemen, including the Ḥimyarites, Ḥashidites, Ṣirwāḥites, Humlanites, Ghaymānites, and Radmānites. The Sabaean language belongs to the South Arabian subgroup of the Semitic group of the Afro-Asiatic language family.〔Leonid Kogan and Andrey Korotayev: "Sayhadic Languages (Epigraphic South Arabian)." ''Semitic Languages''. London: Routledge, 1997, p. 157–183〕 Sabaean is distinguished from the other members of Old South Arabian by the use of ''h'' to mark the third person, and as a causative prefix; the other language all use ''s1'' in these cases; Sabaean is therefore called an ''h''-language, and the others ''s''-languages.〔Norbert Nebes and Peter Stein, "Ancient South Arabian" in ''The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia''. CUP 2008〕
== Script ==
Sabaean was written in the South Arabian alphabet, and like Hebrew and Arabic marked only consonants, the only indication of vowels being with Matres Lectionis. For many years the only texts discovered were inscriptions in the formal Masnad script (Sabaean ''ms3nd''), but in 1973 documents in another minuscule and cursive script were discovered, dating back to the second half of the 1st century BC; only a few of the latter have so far been published.〔Leonid Kogan and Andrey Korotayev: ''Sayhadic Languages (Epigraphic South Arabian)''. ''Semitic Languages''. London: Routledge, 1997, p. 221.〕
The South Arabic alphabet used in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Yemen beginning in the 8th century BC (all three locations) later evolved into the Ge'ez alphabet.The Ge'ez language however is no longer considered to be a descendant of Sabaean, or of Old South Arabian;〔Weninger, Stefan. "Ge'ez" in ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica'': D-Ha, p.732.〕 and there is linguistic evidence that Semitic languages were in use and being spoken in Eritrea and Ethiopia as early as 2000 BC.〔Stuart, Munro-Hay (1991). ''Aksum: An African Civilization of Late Antiquity'' page 57. Edinburgh: University Press.〕
Sabaean is attested in some 1040 dedicatory inscriptions, 850 building inscriptions, 200 legal texts and 1300 short graffiti (containing only personal names).〔N. Nebes, P. Stein: Ancient South Arabian, in: Roger D. Woodard (Hrsg.): ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004〕 No literary texts of any length have yet been brought to light. This paucity of source material, and the limited forms of the inscriptions has made it difficult to get a complete picture of Sabaean grammar. Thousands of inscriptions written in a cursive script (called ''Zabur'') incised into wooden sticks have been found and date to the Middle Sabaean period; these represent letters and legal documents and as such include a much wider variety of grammatical forms.
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