Digital South Arabia

By Alessandra Avanzini

Southern Arabia is a country blessed by the gods: Arabia Felix (the happy Arabia), is an image handed down by classical sources. South Arabia’s fame is connected with its fine aromas, in particular frankincense. In our collective memory is an equally well-known if historically problematic character: the Queen of Sheba and her travels from the city of Sabaʾ to Jerusalem to meet king Solomon.

But study of South Arabian culture has remained marginalized within ancient Near Eastern studies. The long history of ancient South Arabian culture, its documents and artistic accomplishments, is a field with few scholars, and is not well known to a wider public. A research group at the University of Pisa is now trying to bring this important cultural heritage to the general public, in part through a new a web portal – Arabia Antica – that focuses on the history and languages of the region.

At the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE in South-Western Arabia, in the region that today corresponds to the Republic of Yemen, written and archaeological sources have attested the formation of four kingdoms. Four main Semitic languages can be identified, each of which is linked to one of the four kingdoms. These languages – Minaic, Sabaic, Qatabanic and Hadramitic – share linguistic traits, but there are also clear differences which allow us to identify – in the case of fairly long texts – the language and, therefore, the kingdom of origin.

Map of Ancient South Arabia

Inscriptions provide our primary source for the ancient history of this part of the Near East. Almost 15,000 (!) inscriptions comprise the Ancient South Arabian documentation. The vast majority of inscriptions come from today’s Republic of Yemen, but Ancient South Arabian inscriptions are also attested in south-western Oman, in Ethiopia, and, even further, to the north of Arabia, in Egypt and as far away as Delos.

The inscriptions are incised on the bases of statuettes, stelae, decorated slabs, city walls, and on mountainsides. Some splendid bronze objects such as statues, bowls, goblets, oil lamps, small plaques decorated with animals, and geometric or floral elements, bear inscriptions cast together with the object itself or incised later. Contact with the Hellenistic world was profound. Surely from the end of the first century BC, luxury objects for houses and temples were deeply influenced by Hellenistic culture.

Inscribed statue. All figures courtesy Alessandra Avanzini.

Inscribed stele.

Inscription carved on rock face.

Inscribed bronze bowl.

Inscribed Hellenzing bronze sculptures.

Inscribed Hellenzing bronze sculptures.

The stelae and statuettes from necropolises provide an artistic repertory typical of Ancient South Arabian art. In the statuettes it is striking to see the lack of interest in depicting the human body accurately, which is disproportionately smaller than the head and, in contrast, the ability in reproducing details of the face. In many cases heads appear to be artistic re-interpretations of the human face.

The script of Ancient South Arabian inscriptions is regular, geometric, and includes separators between the words. Reading texts usually does not pose any problems, unless it is fragmentary, corroded, or worn. Of course, simply reading an inscription will not lead to a full understanding of its linguistic structure or cultural context. The syntax is often complex, and they abound in veiled cultural allusions whose significance may escape us. Moreover, the long history of South Arabia, and in particular its chronology, are only partially known.

We cannot yet propose absolute dates for most of the inscriptions from the first millennium BCE, but it is possible to create relative chronologies. Not only palaeography, in its narrow sense, but other elements concerning the content, formularies, and iconography, can help to identify an epigraphic ‘style’ typical of a specific period.

Substantial progress has been made in recent years in reconstructing grammar. The Ancient South Arabian languages are not scantily and poorly attested; their major grammatical and lexical features are well known. Ancient South Arabian inscriptions are often very short and record only a name – such as in funerary stelae – but in some other cases they are long texts with abundant historical and linguistic data.

At least three important types of texts can be found in the Ancient South Arabian epigraphic corpus: construction inscriptions, dedicatory inscriptions, and legal inscriptions.

Construction inscription.

Dedicatory inscription.

Legal inscription.

Construction inscriptions were created in order to commemorate the building of an individual’s house, tomb, or irrigation works. The local divinities of the region were mentioned at the end of the text and ensured divine protection for the construction works. Linguistically, the texts are simple but they full of historical data. They record numerous names of kings, divinities, provide the basis for historical geography, and also indicate the territories of tribes, or of a kingdom.

Dedicatory texts are laconic at the beginning of South Arabian history, but later become longer. As is typical for this genre, the text includes a description of the motives for writing, such as the protection of a community, and includes thanks to the god.

Normative or legal texts provide a general idea of the law system in ancient South Arabia. These texts are among the oldest and include statements of ownership rights for lands and irrigation works. The majority of these are legal texts, but in other cases these become actual laws applicable to a whole kingdom.

The last decades have seen a substantial increase in documentation, far more than almost every other area of the Near East. But the lack of a collection of edited inscriptions with philological and historical comments was restricting Ancient South Arabian studies. A large number of new texts have been published since mid-20th century, improving the linguistic and historical knowledge. But South Arabian history and languages have remained limited to a few specialists.

Since 1999 the University of Pisa research group on pre-Islamic Arabia has pioneered the application of computer technology to the study of epigraphy with the CSAI project, which has been incorporated into the DASI project. The CSAI project deals with the Ancient South Arabian inscriptions, while the DASI project seeks to collect the whole of pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions in an open-access archive.

Digital Archive for the Study of Pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions.

The main objective of this archive is to gather published inscriptions in one digital database that is continually updated. DASI provides a tool for managing the variety of data – linguistic, onomastic, archaeological, and historical-artistic – needed to understand an epigraphic corpus and the culture that produced it.

An important achievement of the project was to create information technology tools that enable us to catalogue material ranging from inscriptions in different Semitic languages to archaeological artifacts in a database that will allow complex searches on many levels. The digitization procedure focuses on the description of the features of inscriptions (language, script, textual typology, etc.), recording related data such as material and iconography, and the transcription and the translation of the text, along with pertinent bibliography.

The home page of DASI gives access to the three main linguistic corpora of inscriptions: the Corpus of South Arabian inscriptions, the Corpus of North Arabian inscriptions, and the Corpus of Aramaic inscriptions. Through each the user can consult catalogued material on different levels, either through main indexes or by means of more specific search tools. The Corpora map visualizes the tree of all corpora and sub-corpora in which the inscriptions have been collected. Similarly, the Collections map provides access to collections of epigraphic and anepigraphic objects catalogued in the museums. Inside each corpus or collection the user can refine the alphabetical lists of letters of Epigraphs or Objects or Sites of provenance.

The Epigraph card, the core of the archive recording various data (language, chronology, typology, etc.), is preliminary to the transcription of the text. Another linguistic tool is the alphabetical List of Words attested in the inscriptions. In addition with these indexes, the DASI website provides the user with a Google Map tool, which allows her/him to reach the sites by a visual search. An Archaeological Card is connected to the most important ancient sites.

Epigraph card.

Archaeological Card.

In addition to these static lists, DASI allows the user to perform a number of dynamic searches on the text of inscriptions or a group by means of Textual search. This is one of the most sophisticated functions of the DASI website, a powerful tool for the study of the inscriptions, which allows searches for words or word patterns within a phrase. This search can be restricted to lexical or onomastics results only. Moreover, it can be restricted within particular onomastic categories. Additional search parameters on extra-textual data, such as language, chronology, and provenance, are also provided.

Text search card.

Through these tools the vast corpora of South Arabian inscriptions and the rich history and culture of Ancient South Arabia will be opened to a new generation of scholars and to the public.