Publisher's Synopsis
From the Jawf region of Yemen come the earliest Ancient South Arabian epigraphs, dating back since the 8th century BCE. Expression of the five city-states of Nashshan, Kamna, Haram, Ma'in and Inabba, and of their fluctuating relations with Saba, they attest to a well-defined writing and artistic tradition which characterized this region until the expansion of the kingdom of Ma'in at the beginning of the 6th century BCE. This volume collects in a unitary philological edition the nearly three hundred inscriptions composing this archaic corpus. Mainly written in the Minaic language and partly in Sabaic, those texts are pivotal sources for the historical, cultural, and linguistic reconstruction of the earliest phase of the Ancient South Arabian history.
