Qatabānian (or Qatabānic), one of the four better-documented 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 othe ...

(or "Ṣayhadic") sub-group of South Semitic, was spoken mainly but not exclusively in the kingdom of Qatabān, located in central Yemen. The language is attested between 500 BC and 200 AD. Some two thousand inscriptions are known written in the Ancient South Arabian Monumental Script, known as ''Musnad''. These inscriptions are mainly found in Wādī Bayhān and Wādī Ḥārib to the south-east of Ma'rib, and from the plateau to the south of that area. Qatabanian inscriptions increase after the beginning of the 4th century BC when the

Sabaeans The Sabaeans or Sabeans ( Sabaean:, ; ar, ٱلسَّبَئِيُّوْن, ''as-Sabaʾiyyūn''; he, סְבָאִים, Səḇāʾīm) were an ancient group of South Arabians. They spoke the Sabaean language, one of the Old South Arabian langu ...

ceased to dominate the area, and Qatabān became an independent kingdom. Qatabanian was spoken in an area across the kingdom of Qatabān as far as Jabal al-'Awd (near Zafar) in the southwest, and if we are to believe the Greek and Latin writers, it went as far as Bāb al-Mandab on the Red Sea. At the end of the 2nd century AD,

Saba' The Sabaeans or Sabeans (Sabaean:, ; ar, ٱلسَّبَئِيُّوْن, ''as-Sabaʾiyyūn''; he, סְבָאִים, Səḇāʾīm) were an ancient group of South Arabians. They spoke the Sabaean language, one of the Old South Arabian languag ...

and Ḥaḑramawt finally defeated Qatabān, and the inscriptions ended. The language used to write inscriptions in the kingdom of Awsān, known as Awsānian (or Awsānite) is virtually identical to Qatabānic, but it is so badly attested (25 inscriptions), that it remains uncertain whether it is a Qatabānic dialect or a distinct language.

Numerals

Qatabānian has an unusual form for the

cardinal number In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality (size) of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number: the number of elements in the set. T ...

"one" - ''ṭd'' / fem. ''ṭt'' ; this has no known cognates in any of the ancient Semitic languages, although it does appear in modern South Arabian languages (cf. Jibbālī ''ṭad'', fem. ''ṭit''). Qatabānian also has another word for "one", ''ˤs₁tn'', which is cognate with the

Minaean 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 by ...

''ˤs₁t'' (and with forms in Akkadian,

Ugaritic Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic language, classified by some as a dialect of the Amorite language and so the only known Amorite dialect preserved in writing. It is known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeologist ...

and

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

). The Qatabānian forms for "three" and "six" are the same as the Old Sabaean words: ''s₂lṯ'' (fem. ''s₂lṯt'') and ''s₁dṯ'' (fem. ''s₁dṯt''). Qatabānian expresses distributives by repeating the number, thus: b-ˤs₂r ˤs₂r ḫbṣtm mṣˤm l-ṭt ṭt ywmm "ten full Ḫabṣat coins each for each day".

References

Bibliography

* * * * * {{cite book , last1=Stein , first1=Peter , chapter=Ancient South Arabian , editor-first=Stefan , editor-last=Weninger , title=The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook , publisher= De Gruyter Mouton , location=Berlin , date=2011 , isbn=3110186136 , pages=1042–1073 Languages attested from the 5th century BC Old South Arabian languages Languages of Yemen