The inscriptions seem to indicate that the monarchies of South Arabia were hereditary, the son generally following the father, though not seldom the brother of the deceased came between, apparently on the principle of seniority, which we find also in North Arabia. Eratosthenes (in Strabo xvi. 4, 3) says that the first child born to one of the magnates after a king came to the throne was his designated successor; the wives of the magnates who were pregnant at the king’s accession were carefully watched and the first child born was brought up as heir to the kingdom. There seems to be a mistake in the first part of this statement; what Eratosthenes will have said is that the oldest prince after the king was the designated successor. This law of succession explains how we repeatedly find two kings named together among the Sabæans, and almost always find two among the Minæans; the second king is the heir. The principle of seniority, as we know from North-Arabian history, gives rise to intrigues and palace revolutions, and was probably often violated in favour of the direct heir. On the other hand, it readily leads to a limited power of election by the magnates, and in fact good Arabian sources speak of seven electoral princes. Some inscriptions name, besides the king, an eponymus, whose office seems to have been priestly, his titles being dhú ḥarif, eponymus, and rashúw, “sacrificer.” All royal inscriptions are signed by him at the beginning and the end, and he appears with the king on coins.
Religion.—In spite of the many ruins of temples and inscriptions, the religion of the Sabæans is obscure. Most of the many names of gods are mere names that appear and vanish again in particular districts and temples. Of the great national gods of the Sabæans and Minæans we know a little more. The worship of the heavenly bodies, for which there is Arabic evidence, had really a great place in Yemen. Sun-worship seems to have been peculiar to the Sabæans and Hamdanites; and, if the Sabis of Sabota (Pliny) was in fact the sun deity Shams, this must be ascribed to Sabæan influence. The Sabæan Shams was a goddess, while the chief divinity of the Minæans was the god ‘Athtar, a male figure, worshipped under several forms, of which the commonest are the Eastern ‘Athar and ‘Athtar Dhú Ḳabḍ. Wadd and Nikrah, the gods of love and hate, are possibly only other forms of the two ‘Athtars. The Sabæans also recognize ‘Athtar; but with them he is superseded by Almaḳah, who, according to Hamdání, is the planet Venus, and therefore is identical with ‘Athtar. The moon-god Sin appears on an inscription of Shabwat; but, according to Hamdání, Haubas, “the drier,” was the Sabæan moon-god. On the Shabwat inscription ‘Athtar is the father of Sin, and it is noteworthy that these two deities also appear as nearly related in the Babylonian legend of Ishtar’s descent to Hades, where Ishtar is conversely the daughter of the god Sin. The mother of ‘Athtar on another inscription is probably the sun. We find also the common Semitic Il (El) and a Dhú Samai answering to the northern Ba‘al Shamayim. Three gods of the inscriptions are named in the Koran,—Wadd, Yaghúth, and Nasr. In the god-name Ta’lab there may be an indication of tree-worship. The many minor deities may be passed over; but we must mention the sanctuary of Riyám, with its images of the sun and moon, and, according to tradition, an oracle. In conformity with old Semitic usage, pilgrimages were made at definite seasons to certain deities, and the Sabæan pilgrim month, Dhú Ḥijjatán, is the northern Dhú’l-Ḥijja. The outlines, and little more, of a few of the many temples can still be traced. Noteworthy are the elliptic form of the chief temples in Ma’rib and Ṣirwáḥ, and the castle of Naḳab-al-Ḥajar ẉith its entrances north and south.
Sacrifices and incense were offered to the gods. The names for altar (midhbaḥ) and sacrifice (dhibḥ) are common Semitic words, and the altar of incense has among other names that of miḳṭar, as in Hebrew. A variety of spices—the wealth of the land—are named on these altars, as rand, ladanum, costus, tarum, &c. Frankincense appears as lubán, and there are other names not yet understood. The gods received tithes of the produce of trade and of the field, in kind or in ingots and golden statues, and these tributes, with freewill offerings, erected and maintained the temples. Temples and fortifications were often combined. The golden statues were votive offerings; thus a man and his wife offer four statues for the health of their four children and a man offers to Dhú Samai statues of a man and two camels, in prayer for his own health and the protection of his camels from disease of the joints.
Their commerce brought the Sabans under Christian and Jewish influence, and, though the old gods were too closely connected with their life and trade to be readily abandoned, the great change in the trading policy, already spoken of, seems to have affected religion as well as the state. The inland gods lost importance with the failure of the overland trade, and Judaism and Christianity seem for a time to have contended for the mastery in South Arabia. Jewish influence appears in the name Raḥmán (see above), while efforts at Christianization seem to have gone forth from several places at various times. According to Philostorgius, the Homerites were converted under Constantius II. by the Indian Theophilus, who built churches in Ẓafar and Aden. Another account places their conversion in the reign of Anastasius (491–518). In Nejrán Syrian missionaries seem to have introduced Christianity (Nöldeke). But, as the religion of the hostile Ethiopians, Christianity found political obstacles to its adoption in Yemen; and, as heathenism had quite lost its power, it is intelligible that Dhú Nuwas, who was at war with Ethiopia before the last fatal struggle, became a Jew. His expedition against Christian Nejrán had therefore political as well as religious motives. The Ethiopian conquest rather hurt than helped Christianity. The famous ḳalís (ἐκκλησία) of Abraha in San‘á seems to have been looked on as a sign of foreign dominion, and Islám found it easy to supersede Christianity in Yemen.
Coins.—In older times and in many districts coins were not used, and trade was carried on mainly by barter. Nor have there yet been many great finds of coins; indeed most of the pieces in European collections probably come from the same hoard. At the same time the coins throw a general light on the relations of ancient Yemen. The oldest known pieces are imitations of the Athenian mintage of the 4th century b.c., with the legend ΑΘΕ and the owl standing on an overturned amphora. The reverse has the head of Pallas with a Sabæan N. Of younger coins the first series has a king’s head on the reverse, and the old obverse is enriched with two Sabæan monograms, which have been interpreted as meaning “majesty” and “eponymus” respectively. In a second series the Greek legend has disappeared, and, instead of the two Sabæan monograms, we have the names of the king and the eponymus. A third series shows Roman influence and must be later than the expedition of Gallus. As the standard of the coins of Attic type is not Attic but Babylonian, we must not think of direct Athenian influence. The type must have been introduced either from Persia or from Phœnicia (Gaza). One remarkable tetradrachm with the Sabæan legend Abyath’á is imitated from an Alexander of the 2d century b.c., the execution being quite artistic and the weight Attic. There are also coins struck at Raydán and Ḥarib, which must be assigned to the Himyarite period (1st and 2d century a.d.). The inscriptions speak of “bright Hayyilí coins in high relief,” but of these none have been found. They also speak of sela‘ pieces. The sela‘ in late Hebrew answers to the older shekel and the mention of it seems to point to Jewish or Christian influence.
Literature.—Fresnel, Pièces rel. aux Inscrr. Himyarites déc. par M. Arnaud, 1845; Inscriptions in the Himyaritic Character in the British Museum, London, 1863; Prætorius, Beitr. zur Erklärung der himjar. Inschr., 3 parts, Halle, 1872–74; Kremer, Südaribische Sage, 1866; Sprenger, Alte Geogr. Arabiens, 1873; D. H. Müller, Südarabische Studien, Vienna, 1877; Id., Die Burgen u. Schlösser Südarabiens, 2 parts, Vienna, 1879–81 (especially for chronology and antiquities); Mordtmann and Müller, Sabäische Denkmäler, Vienna, 1883; Derenbourg, Études sur l'Épigraphie du Yemen, Paris, 1884; Id., Nouv. Étud., 1885; Glaser, Mittheilungen über . . . sab. Inschr., 1886; Hamdání, Geogr. d. Arab. Halbinsel, ed. D. H. Müller, vol. i., Leyden, 1884. See also papers by Osiander, Z.D.M.G., xix.–xx. (1864–65); Halévy, Journ. As., 1872–74; D. H. Müller, Z.D.M.G., xxix.–xxxi., xxxvii.; Prideaux, Tr. Soc. Bibl. Arch., 1873; Derenbourg, Bab. and Or. Record, London, 1887. In the press, D. H. Müller, Epigraphische Denkmäler nach . . . Copien Eutings. Further cp. the travels of Niebuhr, Seetzen, Wellsted, Wrede, Maltzan, Halévy, Manzoni, and Glaser.
YENISEISK, a province of Eastern Siberia, which extends from the Chinese frontier to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, with an area of 992,870 square miles—as large as one-half of European Russia—has Tobolsk and Tomsk on the W., Yakutsk and Irkutsk on the E., north-western Mongolia on the S., and the Arctic Ocean on the N. (see vol. xxii. pl. I.). Its southern extremity being in 51° 45′ N. lat. and its northern (Cape Tcheluskin) in 77° 38′, it combines a great variety of orographical types, from the Sayan alpine regions in the south to the tundras of the Arctic littoral.
