The Minaean language (also Minaic, Madhabaic or Madhābic) was an

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 othe ...

or Ṣayhadic language spoken in Yemen in the times of the Old South Arabian civilisation. The main area of its use may be located in the al-Jawf region of North-East Yemen, primarily in the Wādī Madhāb. Most of texts in this language were composed by the

Minaeans The Minaean people were the inhabitants of the kingdom of Ma'in ( Minaean: ''Maʿīn''; modern Arabic ''Maʿīn'') in modern-day Yemen, dating back to the 10th century BCE-150 BCE. It was located along the strip of desert called Ṣayhad ...

, but the other civil-temple communities of the Wādī Madhāb (Nashshan, Kaminahu, Ḥaram, and Inabba') also used it as a literary medium.

History

The earliest Minaean inscriptions are contemporary with the earliest

Sabaean Sabean or Sabaean may refer to: *Sabaeans, ancient people in South Arabia **Sabaean language, Old South Arabian language *Sabians, name of a religious group mentioned in the Quran, historically adopted by: **Mandaeans, Gnostic sect from the marshl ...

ones, i.e. the 8th century BCE, though they are less numerous, and come from the cities along Wadi Madhaab, to the north-east of

Ma'rib Marib ( ar, مَأْرِب, Maʾrib; Old South Arabian: 𐩣𐩧𐩨/𐩣𐩧𐩺𐩨 ''Mryb/Mrb'') is the capital city of Marib Governorate, Yemen. It was the capital of the ancient kingdom of ''Sabaʾ'' ( ar, سَبَأ), which some scholar ...

. Minaean trading posts, and Minaean inscriptions are also found outside South Arabia, as in the ancient oasis of Dēdan (the present day

Al-'Ula Al-'Ula ( ar, ٱلْعُلَا '), is a city of the Medina Region in north-western Saudi Arabia. Historically located on the incense route, the city lies within the Governorate of 'Ula ( ar, مُحَافَظَة ٱلْعُلَا, Muḥāfathat A ...

in Saudi Arabia), and even on the Greek island of

Delos The island of Delos (; el, Δήλος ; Attic: , Doric: ), near Mykonos, near the centre of the Cyclades archipelago, is one of the most important mythological, historical, and archaeological sites in Greece. The excavations in the island ar ...

and in Egypt. Minaean seems to disappear as a written language about the end of the 2nd century BCE.

Phonology

The phonology of the ancient Minaean language seems to be essentially similar to that of the other Old South Arabian languages. One peculiarity of Minaean is that it writes the phoneme in foreign names as (e.g., Delos becomes ''dlṯ''), but still keeps the phoneme distinct in native words. Minaean seems to insert an etymologically unexplained ''h'' in certain nominal endings, pronouns and particles; some plurals also exhibit this same feature: and , plurals of ''bn'' (son). These may be

plene In orthography, a ''plene scriptum'' (; Latin language, Latin , "fully" and ''scriptum'', plural ''scripta'', " omethingwritten") is a word containing an additional letter, usually one which is superfluous, not normally written in such words, ...

writings of a long vowel other than or .

Grammatical features peculiar to Minaean

Due to the limited amount of texts that have survived, many forms are not attested, though hopefully the discovery of new texts will provide us with more source material. In Minaean, external plurals seem to be especially common; an -h is often used at the end of words in the construct state, even in the singular.

Minaean nominal endings

(Compare the table given under

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 t ...

Relative pronouns

Particles

Whereas Sabaean uses the preposition ''l-'' to mean "to(wards)", or to express the dative case, Minaean often has ''k-'' (compare Ḥaḑramitic ''h-''). The particle k- has a prefixed s₂ in Minaean, as in ''bn s₂-kḏ'' "from (the possibility) that ...". Minaean, like the other non-Sabaean languages also has a temporal conjunction ''mty'' ("when"). The Minaean negative particle, which has been so far badly attested, is ''lhm''.

Verbs

Minaean is distinguished from the other Old South Arabian languages by having an extra form for verb stems with a reduplicated second radical, spelled fˁˁl (as in ˁlly, "raise"Inscription: M 203/2.).

Conjugation of the perfect tense

Minaean, like the other South Arabian languages, forms the

perfect tense The perfect tense or aspect (abbreviated or ) is a verb form that indicates that an action or circumstance occurred earlier than the time under consideration, often focusing attention on the resulting state rather than on the occurrence itself. ...

by adding suffixes. Unlike the other dialects, however, it does not write the dual and plural endings, they are therefore the same as the singular; for example: ''s₃l ("he/they dedicated").

References

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). ''Semitic Languages''. London: Routledge, 1997, p. 157-183. *

''Ancient Yemen''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995

External links

Corpus of Minaic Inscriptions
from the Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions (DASI) {{DEFAULTSORT:Minaean Language Old South Arabian languages Ancient history of Yemen Languages of Yemen Languages attested from the 13th century BC Languages extinct in the 1st century