Inscriptions.—This abstract of the history of Yemen from ancient sources can now be verified and supplemented from inscriptions. Doubts as to the greatness and importance of the Sabæan state, as attested by the ancients, and as to the existence of a special Sabæan writing called “Musnad,” of which the Arabs tell, were still current when Niebuhr, in the 18th century, brought to Europe the first account of the existence of ancient inscriptions (not seen by himself) in the neighbourhood of Yarím. Following this hint, Seetzen, in 1810, was able to send to Europe, from porphyry blocks near Yarím, the first copies of Sabæan inscriptions. They could not, however, be read. But the inscriptions found by Wellsted in 1834 at Ḥiṣn Ghoráb were deciphered by Gesenius and Rödiger. Soon after this the courageous explorer Arnaud discovered the ancient Mariab, the royal city of the Sabæans, and at great risk copied fifty-six inscriptions and took a plan of the walls, the dam, and the temple to the east of the city. These, with other inscriptions on stone and on bronze plates brought home by Englishmen, found a cautious and sound interpreter in Osiander. The historical and geographical researches of Kremer and Sprenger gave a fresh impulse to inquiry. Then Joseph Halévy made his remarkable journey through the Jauf, visiting districts and ruins which no European foot had trod since the expedition of Gallus, and returned with almost 800 inscriptions. Of more recent travellers S. Langer and E. Glaser have done most for epigraphy, while Manzoni is to be remembered for his excellent geographical work.
The alphabet of the Sabæan inscriptions is most closely akin to the Ethiopic, but is purely consonantal, without the modifications in the consonantal forms which Ethiopia has devised to express vowels. There are twenty-nine letters, one more than in Arabic, Samech and Sin being distinct forms, as in Hebrew. This alphabet, which is probably the parent of the South-Indian character, is undoubtedly derived from the so-called Phœnician alphabet, the connecting link being the forms of the Ṣafa inscriptions and of the Thamudæan inscriptions found by Doughty and Euting. Of the latter we can determine twenty-six characters, while a twenty-seventh probably corresponds to Arabic ẓ (ظ). A sign for ض also probably existed, but does not occur in the known inscriptions. In the Thamudæan and Sabæan alphabets the twenty-two original Phœnician characters are mostly similar, and so are the differentiated forms for غ and خ, while ث, ذ, and probably also ظ and ض, have been differentiated in different ways. This seems to imply that the two alphabets had a common history up to a certain point, but parted company before they were fully developed. The Thamudæan inscriptions are locally nearer to Phœnicia, and the letters are more like the Phœnician; this character therefore appears to be the link connecting Phœnician with Sabæan writing. It may be noticed that a Thamudæan legend has been found on a Babylonian cylinder of about 1000 b.c., and it is remarkable that the Sabæan saṭara, “write,” seems to be borrowed from Assyrian shaṭâru.
The language of the inscriptions is South Semitic, forming a link between the North Arabic and the Ethiopic, but is much nearer the former than the latter. To the details already given in the article Semitic Languages (vol. xxi. p. 653 sq.) it may be added that of the two dialects commonly called Sabæan and Minæan the latter might be better called Hadramitic, inasmuch as it is the dialect of the inscriptions found in Ḥaḍramaut, and the Minæans seem undoubtedly to have entered the Jauf from Ḥaḍramaut.
The inscriptions not only give names of nations corresponding to those in the Bible and in classical authors but throw a good deal of fresh light on the political history of Yemen. The inscriptions and coins give the names of more than forty-five Sabæan kings. The chronology is still vague, since only a few very late inscriptions are dated by an era and the era itself is not certain. But the rulers named can be assigned to three periods, according as they bear the title “mukrab of Saba,” “king of Saba,” or “king of Saba and Raidán.” The last, as we know from the Aksum inscriptions, are the latest, and those with the title “mukrab” must be the earliest. Four princes of the oldest period bear the name Yatha‘amar, and one of these may, with the greatest probability, be held to be the “Itamara Sabai” who paid tribute to Sargon of Assyria. This helps us to the age of some buildings also. The famous dam of Ma’rib and its sluices were the work of this ancient prince—structures which Arnaud in the 19th century found in the same state in which Hamdání saw them a thousand years ago. The power of these old sovereigns extended far beyond Ma’rib, for their names are found on buildings and monuments in the Jauf.
We cannot tell when the kings took the place of the mukrab, but the Sabæo-Himyaritic period seems to begin with, or a little after, the expedition of Ælius Gallus. A fragmentary inscription of Ma’rib (Br. Mus., 33) was made by “Ilsharḥ Yahḍib and Ya’zil Bayyin, the two kings of Saba and Raidán, sons of Far‘m Yanhab, king of Saba.” If this Ilsharḥ is identical with the Ἰλάσσαρος of Strabo, king of Mariaba at the time of the Roman invasion, the inscription preserves a trace of the influence of that event on the union of the two kingdoms.
The inscriptions of the latest period present a series of dates—669, 640, 582, 573, 385—of an unknown era. Reinaud thought of the Seleucid era, which is not impossible; but Halévy observes that the fortress of Mawiyyat (now Ḥiṣn Ghoráb) bears the date 640, and is said to have been erected “when the Abyssinians overran the country and destroyed the king of Himyar and his princes.” Referring this to the death of Dhú Nuwás (525 a.d.), Halévy fixes 115 b.c. as the epoch of the Sabæan era. This ingenious combination accords well with the circumstance that the oldest dated inscription, of the year 385 (270 a.d.), mentions Athtar, Shams, and other heathen deities, while the inscriptions of 582 (467 a.d.) and 573 (458 a.d.), so far as they can be read, contain no name of a heathen god, but do speak of a god Raḥmánán—that is, the Hebrew Raḥmán, “the compassionate” (Arabic, Al-Raḥmán), agreeably with the fact that Jewish and Christian influences were powerful in Arabia in the 4th century. The only objections to Halévy’s hypothesis are (1) that we know nothing of an epoch-making event in 115 b.c., and (2) that it is a little remarkable that the latest dated inscription, of the year 669 (554 a.d.), should be twenty-five years later than the Abyssinian conquest. An inscription found by Wrede at 'Obne is dated “in the year 120 of the Lion in Heaven,” which we must leave the astronomers to explain.
The inscriptions throw considerable light not only on the Sabæans but on other South-Arabian nations. The Minæans, whose importance has been already indicated, appear in the inscriptions as only second to the Sabæans, and with details which have put an end to much guesswork, e.g., to the idea that they are connected with Miná near Mecca. Their capital, Ma‘ín, lay in the heart of the Sabæan country, forming a sort of enclave on the right hand of the road that leads northward from Ma’rib. South-west of Ma‘ín, on the west of the mountain range, and commanding the road from San‘a to the north, lies Baráḳísh, anciently Yathil, which the inscriptions and Arabic geographers always mention with Ma‘ín. The third Minæan fortress, probably identical with the Κάρνα of the Greeks, lies in the middle of the northern Jauf, and north of the other two. The three Minæan citadels lie nearly in this position (∴), with old Sabæan settlements (Raiam) all round them, and even with some Sabæan places (e.g., Nask and Kamná) within the triangle they form. The dialect of the Minæans is sharply distinguished from the Sabæans (see above). The inscriptions have yielded the names of twenty-seven Minæan kings, who were quite independent, and, as it would seem, not always friends of the Sabæans, for neither dynasty mentions the other on its inscriptions, while minor kings and kingdoms are freely mentioned by both, presumably when they stood under the protection of the one or the other respectively. The Minæans were evidently active rivals of the Sabæan influence, and a war between the two is once mentioned. In Ḥaḍramaut they disputed the hegemony with one another, the government there being at one time under a Minæan, at another under a Sabæan prince, while the language shows now the one and now the other influence. The religions also of the two powers present many points of agreement, with some notable differences. Thus, puzzling as the fact appears, it is clear that the Minæans formed a sort of political and linguistic island in the Sabæan country. The origin of the Minæans from Ḥaḍramaut is rendered probable by the predominance of their dialect in the inscriptions of that country (except in that of Ḥiṣn Ghoráb), by the rule, already mentioned, of a Minæan prince in Ḥaḍramaut, and by Pliny’s statement (H. N., xii. 63) that frankincense was collected at Sabota (the capital of Ḥaḍramaut; inscr. שבות), but exported only through the Gebanites, whose kings received custom dues on it, compared with xii. 69, where he speaks of Minæan myrrh “in qua et Atramitica est et Gebbanitica et Ausaritis Gebbanitarum regno,” &c., implying that Minæan myrrh was really a Hadramite and Gebanite product. All this suggests a close connexion between the Minæans and Ḥaḍramaut; and from the Minæan inscriptions we know that the Gebanites were at one time a Minæan race, and stood in high favour with the queen of Ma‘ín. Thus we are led to conclude that the Minæans were a Hadramite settlement in the Jauf, whose object was to secure the northern trade road for their products. We cannot but see that their fortified posts in the north of the Sabæan kingdom had a strategical purpose; and so Pliny (xii. 54) says, “Attingunt et Minæi, pagus alius, per quos evehitur uno tramite angusto [from Hadramaut]. Hi primi commercium turis fecere maximeque exercent, a quibus et Minæum dictum est.” Besides this road, they had the sea-route, for, according to Pliny, their allies, the Gebanites, held the port of Ocelis. If the Minæans were later immigrants from Ḥaḍramaut, we can understand how they are not mentioned in Gen. x. In later times, as is proved by the Minæan colony in Al-‘Olá, which Euting has revealed to us, they superseded the Sabæans in some parts of the north. In the ‘Olá inscriptions we read the names of Minæan kings and gods. Notable also is the mention in 1 Chron. iv. 41 of the “Bedouin encampments (אהלים) and the Ma‘íním” smitten by the Simeonites, which may possibly refer to the destruction of a Minæan caravan protected by these Bedouins. The LXX. at least renders Ma‘íním by Μιναίους. It seems bold to conjecture that the Minæans were in accord with the Romans under Ælius Gallus, yet it is noteworthy that no Minæan town is named among the cities which that general destroyed, though ruin fell on Nask and Kamna, which lie inside the Minrean territory.
