Ḥaḍramautic or Ḥaḍramitic was the easternmost of the four known languages of the
Old South Arabian
Ancient South Arabian (ASA; also known as Old South Arabian, Epigraphic South Arabian, Ṣayhadic, or Yemenite) is a group of four closely related extinct languages ( Sabaean/Sabaic, Qatabanic, Hadramitic, Minaic) spoken in the far southern ...
subgroup of the
Semitic language
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic,
Amharic, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew, Maltese, Modern South Arabian languages and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by mo ...
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 centur ...
and also the area round the Hadhramite capital of
Shabwa, in what is now
Yemen
Yemen, officially the Republic of Yemen, is a country in West Asia. Located in South Arabia, southern Arabia, it borders Saudi Arabia to Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, the north, Oman to Oman–Yemen border, the northeast, the south-eastern part ...
. 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 () 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 border with Yemen's Al Mahrah Governorate and the southern border wi ...
, Oman.
Script and phonology
Almost the entire body of evidence for the ancient Ḥaḑramautic language comes from inscriptions written in the monumental
Ancient South Arabian script
The Ancient South Arabian script (Old South Arabian: ; modern ) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the late 2nd millennium BCE, and remained in use through the late sixth century CE. It is an abjad, a writing system where only con ...
, consisting of 29 letters, and deriving from the
Proto-Sinaitic script
The Proto-Sinaitic script is a Middle Bronze Age writing system known from a small corpus of about Serabit el-Khadim proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, 30-40 inscriptions and fragments from Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula, as well as Wadi el ...
. The sounds of the language were essentially the same as those of
Sabaic
Sabaic, sometimes referred to as Sabaean, was a Old South Arabian, Sayhadic language that was 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 ...
.
Noteworthy characteristics of Ḥaḑramautic include its tendency, especially in inscriptions from Wadi Ḥaḍhramaut, to represent Old South Arabian ''ṯ'' as ''s
3'': thus we find s
2ls
3 ("three"; cf. Sabaean ''s
2lṯ''.) There are also instances where ''ṯ'' is written for an older form ''s
3''; e.g. Ḥaḑramautic ''mṯnad'' ("inscription"), which is ''msnd'' in the rest of Old South Arabian.
History
Potsherds with Ancient South Arabian letters on them, found in
Raybūn, the old Ḥaḍramitic capital, have been radiocarbon dated to the 12th century BC. The language was certainly in use from 800 BC but in the fourth century AD, 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 centur ...
was conquered by the
Ḥimyarites, who used Sabaic as an official language, and after then there are no more records in Ḥaḍramautic.
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 ''s
3''. As in other Semitic languages ''n'' can be assimilated to a following consonant, compare ''ʾnfs
1'' "souls" > ''ʾfs
1''
In Ḥaḑramautic the third person pronouns begin with ''s
1''. It has feminine forms ending in ''ṯ'' and ''s
3''.
References
Bibliography
* {{cite book
, first1=Leonid , last1=Kogan
, first2=Andrey , last2=Korotayev , author2-link=Andrey Korotayev
, chapter=Sayhadic Languages (Epigraphic South Arabian)
, title=Semitic Languages
, location=London
, publisher=Routledge
, year=1997
, pages=157-183
Languages attested from the 8th century BC
Old South Arabian languages
Extinct languages of Asia
Languages of Yemen