South Arabian zabūr script in the Gulf: some recent discoveries from Mleiha (Sharjah, UAE)

Abstract

While the so‐called Hasaitic script in the Gulf region has long been understood as being an influence from South Arabia, the actual reason for, and the way of, adapting the Ancient South Arabian script in that region has remained a matter of dispute. Recent finds from Mleiha may now contribute to clarify this picture. The two objects, a small tablet of silver and the fragment of an amphora, are inscribed with a script that is neither Hasaitic in its common form (i.e. a close relative of the Ancient South Arabian monumental or musnad script) nor Aramaic, but rather a derivative of the so‐called minuscule script or zabūr from Ancient South Arabia. The discovery of this script, which was used for everyday correspondence in ancient Yemen, is thus far unparalleled in the Gulf region. The paper provides a first decipherment and interpretation of the two inscriptions and draws some preliminary conclusions on the development of writing in the region.

Two inscribed wine amphoras from Thāj, Saudi Arabia

“…According to this, two writing systems were used side by side in Eastern Arabia in that period: Aramaic, the prestigious international language of that time apparently adapted from the administrative apparatus of the Achaemenid empire; and the so‐called Hasaitic, a script modelled on the South Arabian writing technique, which basically included a geometric and a cursive variant for the purpose of writing monumental inscriptions and daily correspondence, respectively. That the East Arabians adapted not only the monumental characters of this script but also its cursive variant (called “minuscule” or zabūr ) is proven by respective evidence for local manifestations of this particular script—one of them an ownership mark on a piece of pottery quite similar to the present inscriptions from Thāj (Mleiha 12; see Stein, 2017: 118–119). It is only consequent that such evidence for the use of script in daily economic affairs can be established also in Thāj, the core region of what is called the Hasaitic writing culture.…”

“…It is only consequent that such evidence for the use of script in daily economic affairs can be established also in Thāj, the core region of what is called the Hasaitic writing culture. If we assume that the process of adopting the South Arabian cursive script in the Gulf region was stimulated by close trading activities between the old metropolis of Gerrha and the commercial centres of South Arabia around 300 BC (Stein, 2017: 119–121), this mode of writing must have been established first in the region around Gerrha (whether this be identified with Thāj or rather al‐Ḥufūf; see Robin, 2016) and only subsequently further south‐east in Mleiha, where the first evidence for this happened to be discovered a couple of years ago. It is certainly only a question of time before further written records in the South Arabian/Hasaitic cursive script come to light in the greater region of Thāj and al‐Ḥufūf, which formed the centre of the Gerrhaean or Hagarite commercial realm during the Hellenistic period.…”

A late pre‐Islamic bowl with Levantine‐inspired decoration from ed‐Dur (UAE)

“…Evidently, the fourth sign is a concluding word divider (Peter Stein, personal communication, 11.19.2017). The musnad inscription cannot be taken as proof of an origin in south‐western Arabia (Yemen), since this alphabet had a wide distribution and says nothing about its underlying language (Yule, ; Stein, : 121 n. 42). The use of the script in south‐eastern Arabia is demonstrated by the recent discovery at Mleiha of a bilingual funerary inscription dating to 222–221 or 215–214 BCE, which mentions a mlk ʿ mn , a king of Oman (Overlaet, Macdonald & Stein, 2016; Multhoff & Stein, ).…”

The bilingual tomb inscription from Mleiha, Sharjah, UAE—palaeographical and philological remarks

“…As the proposed extension ‘to plunder’ in the meaning of ḥrb finds no further evidence in Ancient South Arabian epigraphy, any relation of the noun bqr in the two Sabaic inscriptions to the subject of animals turns out to be rather unlikely. Since the Hasaitic writing tradition in the Gulf can clearly be anchored in the South Arabian civilisation (Stein, ), it can be assumed that the title used in the Mleiha inscription was known in South Arabia as well. An identification of bqr in both contexts is thus by no means improbable.…”

“…The bilingual tomb inscription is not the only text from Mleiha that has been (re‐)discovered during the past few years. Following the bilingual inscription, two recently found inscribed artefacts from the site were deciphered in the past year: a possession mark on an amphora and a four‐line votive inscription on a small silver plaque (Stein, ). Surprisingly enough, these two inscriptions were not written in the common monumental letters of the South Arabian script (which are also applied for the Hasaitic part of the bilingual inscription) but in the cursive variant or ‘minuscule’ of that script, which is characteristic of everyday correspondence and had so far been known only from Yemen.…”