The Minaeans after Maʿīn? The latest presently dateable Minaic text and the God of Maʿīn

Abstract

Historians of Ancient South Arabia have long questioned when the Minaean Kingdom collapsed and when the Minaean people disappeared thereafter. Scholarship presently leans towards dating the fall to sometime in the first century AD with the Minaeans dissipating shortly thereafter. Relevant for the question of the Minaeans’ disappearance is the Minaic RyIIIb stick inscription called L 53, which I decipher here. Based on a new paleographical dating system for RyIIIb inscriptions that I have developed, L 53 appears to date between the first to third centuries AD. This would make it the latest dateable Minaic text and quite possibly place its origins to after the fall of the Kingdom of Maʿīn. The text also contains the first attestations of the first person plural independent pronoun “we” nḥn in Ancient South Arabian in addition to a new divine moniker “the God of Maʿīn” (ʾlh mʿn). L 53 therefore might attest to a continuing Minaean linguistic and religious identity after the fall of their kingdom, which may be corroborated by Ptolemy’s statement that the Minaeans were a “great people” in the second century AD.