Thamudic, named for the

Thamud The Thamud () were an ancient tribe or tribal confederation in pre-Islamic Arabia that occupied the northwestern Arabian Peninsula. They are attested in contemporaneous Mesopotamian and Classical inscriptions, as well as Arabic ones from the e ...

tribe, is a group of

epigraphic Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

scripts known from large numbers of inscriptions in

Ancient North Arabian Languages and scripts in the 1st Century Arabia Ancient North Arabian (ANA) is a collection of scripts and a language or family of languages under the North Arabian languages branch along with Old Arabic that were used in north and central Ara ...

(ANA) alphabets, which have not yet been properly studied. These texts are found over a huge area from southern Syria to Yemen. In 1937, Fred V. Winnett divided those known at the time into five rough categories A, B, C, D, E. In 1951, some 9,000 more inscriptions were recorded in south-west Saudi Arabia which have been given the name Southern Thamudic. Thamudic - Qaryat al-Faw - on fragment - 20180430

Thamudic - Qaryat al-Faw - on fragment - 20180430

Thamudic A is now known as

Taymanitic Taymanitic was the language and script of the oasis of Taymāʾ in northwestern Arabia, dated to the second half of the 6th century BC. Classification Taymanitic does not participate in the key innovations of Proto-Arabic, precluding it from b ...

. Thamudic E is now known as

Hismaic Hismaic () is a variety of the Ancient North Arabian script and the language most commonly expressed in it. The Hismaic script may have been used to write Safaitic dialects of Old Arabic, but the language of most inscriptions differs from Safaiti ...

. Southern Thamudic is also known as Thamudic F.

Varieties

Thamudic B

The

Thamudic B Thamudic B is a Central Semitic language and script concentrated in northwestern Arabia, with attestations in Syria, Egypt, and Yemen. As a poorly understood form of Ancient North Arabian, it is included in the Thamudic category. Mentions of th ...

inscriptions are concentrated in Northwest Arabia, but can be occasionally found in Syria, Egypt, and Yemen.

Thamudic C

The Thamudic C inscriptions are concentrated in the

Najd Najd is a Historical region, historical region of the Arabian Peninsula that includes most of the central region of Saudi Arabia. It is roughly bounded by the Hejaz region to the west, the Nafud desert in Al-Jawf Province, al-Jawf to the north, ...

, but can be found elsewhere across western Arabia as well. They typically contain the word ''wdd'', of unknown meaning.

Thamudic D

Thamudic D inscriptions are concentrated in northwest Arabia, and one occurs alongside a Nabataean tomb inscription in Hegra (Mada'in Salih) dated to the year 267 CE ( JSNab 17).

Thamudic F (Southern Thamudic)

Thamudic F texts come from the southwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula and seem to contain only names, although some of these names contain mimation and one example of a hl- */hal/ definite article.

References

External links

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History - Pre-Islamic Period Inscriptions - Thamudic
{{Authority control Ancient North Arabian