Ḥaḑramautic or Ḥaḑramitic was the easternmost of the four known languages of the

Old South Arabian Old South Arabian (or Ṣayhadic or Yemenite) is a group of four closely related extinct languages spoken in the far southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. They were written in the Ancient South Arabian script. There were a number of ot ...

subgroup of the

Semitic language The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant and ...

s. It was used in the

Kingdom of Hadhramaut Ḥaḍramawt ( Ḥaḑramitic: , romanized: ; Sabaic, Minaic, Qatabānic: , romanized: ) was an ancient South Semitic-speaking kingdom of South Arabia (ancient Yemen) which existed from the early 1st millennium BCE till the late 3rd century C ...

and also the area round the Hadhramite capital of

Shabwa The ancient city of Shabwa ( Ḥaḑramitic: , romanized: , ; ar, شَبْوَة, translit=Šabwa) was the capital of the Kingdom of Hadhramaut at the South Arabian region of the Arabian Peninsula. The ruins of the city are located in the north ...

, in what is now

Yemen Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the northeast an ...

. The Hadramites also controlled the trade in frankincense through their important trading post of Sumhuram (Hadramautic ), now Khor Rori in the

Dhofar Governorate The Dhofar Governorate ( ar, مُحَافَظَة ظُفَار, Muḥāfaẓat Ẓufār) is the largest of the 11 Governorates of Oman, Governorates in the Oman, Sultanate of Oman in terms of area. It lies in Southern Oman, on the eastern borde ...

, Oman.

Script and phonology

Almost the entire body of evidence for the ancient Ḥaḑramautic language comes from inscriptions written in the monumental Old South Arabian script, consisting of 29 letters, and deriving from the

Proto-Sinaitic script Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, the North Semitic alphabet, or Early Alphabetic) is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabia ...

. The sounds of the language were essentially the same as those of Sabaean (see

Sabaean language Sabaean, also known as Sabaic, was an Old South Arabian language spoken between c. 1000 BC and the 6th century AD, by the Sabaeans. It was used as a written language by some other peoples of the ancient civilization of South Arabia, including ...

). Noteworthy characteristics of Ḥaḑramautic include its tendency, especially in inscriptions from Wādī Ḥaḑramawt, to represent Old South Arabian ''ṯ'' as ''s₃'': thus we find s₂ls₃ ("three"; cf. Sabaean ''s₂lṯ''.) There are also instances where ''ṯ'' is written for an older form ''s₃''; e.g. Ḥaḑramautic ''mṯnad'' ("inscription"), which is ''msnd'' in the rest of Old South Arabian.

History

Potsherds with

letters on them, found in Raybūn, the old Ḥaḑramite capital, have been radiocarbon dated to the 12th century BC.Leonid E. Kogan and Andrey Korotayev: ''Sayhadic (Epigraphic South Arabian)''. In: ''The Semitic Languages'', edited by Robert Hetzron.Pg. 220. Routledge, London, 1997. The language was certainly in use from 800 BC but in the 4th century AD the Ḥaḑramite Kingdom was conquered by the Ḥimyarites, who used Sabaean as an official language, and since then there are no more records in Ḥaḑramautic. During the course of the language’s history there appeared particular phonetic changes, such as the change from ˤ to ˀ, from ẓ to ṣ, from ṯ to ''s₃''. As in other Semitic languages ''n'' can be assimilated to a following consonant, compare ''ʾnfs₁'' "souls" > ''ʾfs₁'' In Ḥaḑramautic the third person pronouns begin with ''s₁''. It has feminine forms ending in ''ṯ'' and ''s₃''.

References

{{Reflist

Bibliography

*Leonid Kogan and

Andrey Korotayev Andrey Vitalievich Korotayev (russian: link=yes, Андре́й Вита́льевич Корота́ев; born 17 February 1961) is a Russian anthropologist, economic historian, comparative political scientist, demographer and sociologist ...

: "Sayhadic Languages (Epigraphic South Arabian)" in ''Semitic Languages''. London: Routledge, 1997, p. 157-183. Languages attested from the 8th century BC Old South Arabian languages Extinct languages of Asia Languages of Yemen