YBHI 1

The present inscription comprises a complete Ancient South Arabian abecedary with several idiosyncratic features. The name of its carver, indicated by the signature on the superior line, points towards a Minaic origin, perhaps a colonist residing at Dadān (on the Minaic colony at Dadān, see Rossi 2014). There is no indicating that the writer was a trained mason, and so the inscription seems to be carved with an unsteady hand. Nevertheless, inexperience cannot alone explain some of the letter shapes encountered. This commentary will discuss irregular glyphs from the perspective of the standardized, monumental ASA script, and conclude with some cursory remarks as to its background.

ḫ: This glyph bears the closest resemblance to minuscule shape, normally used for carving day-to-day documents. This could suggest that our writer was influenced by the every-day register of the script.

ṣ: The ṣ lacks the shaft separating the legs from the head. This shape is encountered in Dadanitic and some Thamudic varieties. It is also sometimes seen in South Arabian graffiti from Yemen.

s³: The bottom of the s³ is open, while the top appears closed. Although the right-branching arm is clearly carved, the left-branching arm is thinner and lacks the balance seen in the lower legs. At a minimum, this suggests a three-appendaged s³ that opens at the bottom. If this was not the intended shape, the author may have added the right-branching arm later, which would explain its distinct thickness and angle.

ʾ: Like the ḫ, the alif bears a close resemblance to the minuscule shape, with a curved base rather than a rectangular one, with the upper section branching horizontally to the left.

ḍ: The shape of this glyph is difficult to account for and will likely remain unclear until further texts in this register are discovered. One interpretation views it as an open, rounded ASA ḍ. However, because it is rounded only on the right side while the left features a perfectly vertical bar, resembling a ship’s anchor, it may simply represent a previously unrecorded shape of the letter rather than an error.

ġ: The ġ is rounded and the protruding stroke is horizonal to the top of the glyph rather than angling downward.

ṭ: The South Arabian ṭ consists of a rectangle with a bisecting vertical line. The shape here is rounded and the bottom is open. A similar shape is found in Hismaic, Dadanitic, and possibly Thamudic B.

z: This glyph has perhaps the most interesting shape, resembling the k of some varieties of Thamudic D, Hismaic, and Safaitic. The bottom half of the glyph has been obliterated, but if it consisted only of a shaft, then the only script that employs this shape for z is Thamudic D (Al-Jallad 2025b). It is also possible that the visible portion of the glyph was mirrored under the damage, resulting in a comb-shaped figure. This would be similar in shape to the ġ of Thamudic B and Dhofari (Al-Jallad 2025d).

The ẓ slot: The glyph that occupies the final position of the abecedary, ẓ, is clearly a ṣ. The repetition of ṣ in both its original and final positions also occurs in the Qaryat al-Fāw abecedary (Al-Jallad and Prioletta 2026), suggesting this was an intentional choice rather than a simple oversight or novice error. The Dhofari letter order also places the merged ṣ-ẓ in final position as well (Al-Jallad 2025d).

The present text departs from the monumental Ancient South Arabian (ASA) alphabet in ways that cannot be dismissed as simple amateurism or lack of writing experience. For instance, the rendering of certain letters—such as the ʾ and ḫ—suggests the writer was trained in a minuscule script, pointing to a professional scribe. Other shapes, including the open ṭ and the ṣ, are paralleled in other South Semitic scripts, proving they are established forms rather than ad-hoc errors. While the ḍ might initially look like a hesitant mistake, a holistic view suggests we reserve judgment; it may well be an authentic variant that will emerge in future discoveries. Most intriguing is the z. If correctly interpreted, it could be the prototype for the later Thamudic D shape, as it cannot be easily derived from the standard ASA "battle-ax" form. Taken together, these features suggest that the deviations stem from a local, day-to-day variant of the ASA script—perhaps a marginal minuscule. Just as the Hasaitic minuscule from Mleiha diverges from Yemeni variants, a similar regional script may have developed at the distant Minaean colony of Dadān.

• YBHI 2