South Arabian documentation on wooden sticks

A résumé fifty years after discovery

Authors

  • Peter Stein

Keywords:

Ancient South Arabian, documentary texts, correspondence, cursive or minuscule script, zabūr

Abstract

It is half a century ago that the first examples of everyday-life documentation from Ancient Yemen came to light. While it was almost twenty years before the first examples of these texts written on wooden sticks in a specific cursive script could be deciphered, research in this field has made immense progress during the past decades. To date, almost 900 texts in Sabaic and Minaic languages have been published, among them many legal documents, correspondence, and writing exercises, including oracular records and other texts from religious practice. The eventual completion of the edition of the 400 documents housed by the Bavarian State Library in Munich gives us reason to reflect on the past years of research and to present some of the most recent discoveries in this particular field of written documentation from pre-Islamic Arabia.

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Published

11/06/2024

How to Cite

Stein, P. (2024). South Arabian documentation on wooden sticks: A résumé fifty years after discovery. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 53, 278–291. Retrieved from https://archaeopresspublishing.com/ojs/index.php/PSAS/article/view/2240

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