Minaic

Minaic is an Ancient South Arabian (ASA) language attested by a corpus of about 1500 inscriptions and more than a hundred minuscule texts on wooden sticks, originating from the region of Wādī al-Jawf (northwestern Yemen) during the first millennium BCE. Several hundred Minaic inscriptions and graffiti are also documented in far-away sites with commercial settlements of the kingdom of Maʿīn.

Chronological and geographical distribution

The earliest documents in the Minaic language come from the city-states that flourished at the beginning of the first millennium BCE in the region of Wādī al-Jawf in north-western Yemen (Fig. 1): Nashshān, Kamna, Haram, Qarnā (capital of Maʿīn), and Inabbaʾ. The political presence of Sabaʾ in the Jawf during the 7th cent. BCE resulted in the production of Sabaic alongside Minaic texts, especially in the town of Haram. At the end of the 7th cent. BCE, Maʿīn annexed the formerly Sabaean town of Yathill — expanding the use of Minaic in the city and in its territory — and part of the territory of other city-states. The local language was named Minaic by modern scholars because of the reputation of Maʿīn in ASA history, although the label ‘Madhābic’ has been also proposed, based on the name of the Wādī Madhāb along which all the above-mentioned city-states were situated (Robin 1991: 98). In the second half of the first millennium BCE, hundreds of inscriptions and graffiti were left by Minaeans along the trans-Arabian routes, especially in the Central and North Arabian commercial settlements of Dadān and Qaryat al-Fāw, and as far as Egypt and the island of Delos. Minaic was no longer attested in writing when the kingdom of Maʿīn declined at the beginning of the first cent. CE (on Maʿīn’s chronology: Schiettecatte & Arbach 2020).

Text genres

Dedications represent the most widespread text genre in the Minaic corpus, followed by construction texts and legal texts. Dedications are expressed by the verb s³lʾ (e.g. AO 31930), in contrast with the other ASA languages using the verb qny at the causative stem. S¹qny appears in several dozen Minaic texts, usually in coordination with rather than instead of s³lʾ. In the inscriptions commemorating the building of the Minaean city-walls, the dedicatory formula is often coordinated with construction verbs, giving rise to a syncretic dedicatory-construction formula (e.g., Maʿīn 1).

The Minaic corpus features a unique expiation genre (e.g., YM 26106; Fig. 2), which was taken over, with some adaptations, in Northern Middle Sabaic. The so-called ‘lists of foreign wives’ are also specific to the Minaic corpus: they are sequences of short notices, each recording the identity of Minaean men and their foreign wives (e.g., Maʿīn 93 A).

Onomastic-only texts represent a large part of written records in Minaic, whether they are graffitied on the rocks of Central and North Arabia or engraved on funerary stelae.

The recent publication of more than a hundred Minaic minuscule texts on wooden sticks has widened the range of genres attested in this linguistic corpus – including private correspondence, administrative records, oracular requests and school exercises – as well as our knowledge of the Minaic lexicon and grammar (Stein 2023; see below).

Grammar

Some of the main features of Minaic grammar are listed hereunder, with an emphasis on the diagnostic traits compared to the other ASA languages, especially Sabaic.

Phonology

• Full repertoire of the 29 ASA phonemes.
• Sporadic assimilation of n to a following consonant.
• Cases of elision of preformative y- in prefix conjugation forms after the precative particle l-.

Morphology

• S¹- causative prefix (shared with non-Sabaic languages, as opposed to Sabaic h-).
• Graphical attestation of a middle radical reduplicating form of the 0, S, T and ST verbal stems, unattested in the other ASA languages (fʿʿl, s¹fʿʿl, ftʿʿl and s¹tfʿʿl patterns).
• 3rd person masculine dual ending Ø at the suffix conjugation, which probably reflects /ā/. Plural ending -w is attested in minuscule texts, while it is graphically un-expressed in monumental texts.
• Evidence of the first person singular form of the prefix conjugation ʾfʿl.
• Existence of a ‘long’ form of the prefix conjugation, marked by the -n ending at the dual and plural, and attestation of a b- prefixed form of the prefix conjugation for the indicative (b-yfʿl; cf. Qatabanic).
• Non-etymological -h in certain positions such as in external plural endings (e.g., -hy for masc. constr.) and tens in numerals (e.g., ʾrbʿhy ‘fourty’), like in the other non-Sabaic languages. Moreover, Minaic attests an ending -h for singular nouns at the construct state (byth ‘the temple of’). This is almost never found in early inscriptions, but becomes increasingly used from the 7th cent. BCE onwards. Evidence from the minuscule texts allows us to trace the use of the h as a mater lectionis in further positions, such as in pronouns (ʾhnk), verbs (ys¹ṯbh-n) and particles (bn ʿmh).
• Irregular use of the indeterminate mark -m, which is extremely sporadic in early monumental inscriptions, supporting the hypothesis that this was not an original feature in Minaic, but related to Sabaic influence.
• Rare use of -m endings on theonyms, which also increased over time.
• Determinate forms of cardinal numbers between 11 and 19, where nunation appears on the second element (e.g., ṯny ʿs²rn ‘twelve’).
• S¹-based 3rd person pronouns (shared with non-Sabaic languages, as opposed to Sabaic h-).
• Evidence of ASA first person plural independent pronoun is provided for the first time in a minuscule text, in the form nḥn. First person singular appears in the form ʾhnk.
• First person singular suffix pronoun -y for the genitive and -n for accusative.
• Demonstratives of nearer deixis and relative pronouns have a base ḏ for singular and dual forms, ʾhl for plural forms.

Particles

• Datival preposition k- (as opposed to Sabaic l-).
• Productivity of f- as a coordinating particle.
• Negator lhm in conditional antecedents; this is likely to be the augmented form of a negator l-, which frequently appears in early texts.

The Minaic inscriptions from Central and North Arabia, which fall within the so-called Marginal Minaic corpus, diverge in some traits from the documents of the motherland, especially as regards palaeography and lexicon. Moreover, there are sporadic cases of writing s¹ instead of s³, which can be ascribed to contact with Dadanitic. Concerning the formation of derived substantives, while standard Minaic conforms to the use of Sabaic h- causative prefix (e.g., hqnyt ‘dedication’), these texts use the non-Sabaic s¹ prefix (‘s¹qnyt’).

Irene Rossi

References and suggested reading

• Agostini, A. 2018. Il rito d’espiazione sudarabico antico: Uno sguardo ai nuovi dati da Barāqish (Yemen), in M. Betrò, S. De Martino, G. Miniaci & F. Pinnock (eds) Egitto e Vicino Oriente antichi: tra passato e futuro. Studi e Ricerche sull’Egitto e il Vicino Oriente in Italia (I convegno nazionale. Pisa, 5–6 giugno 2017): 85–95. Pisa: Pisa University Press.
• Arbach, M. 1993. Lexique Maḏābien. Aix-en-Provence.
• Arbach, M. & I. Rossi 2022. The city-states of the Jawf at the dawn of Ancient South Arabian history (8th–6th centuries BCE) (Arabia Antica 17/1–3). Rome: "L’Erma" di Bretschneider.
• Avanzini, A. 1995. As-Sawdāʾ (Inventario delle Iscrizioni Sudarabiche, 4). Paris, Rome: De Boccard, Herder (AIBL, IsMEO).
• Bron, F. 1998. Maʿīn. Fascicule A : Les documents. Fascicule B : Les planches (Inventaire des Inscriptions Sudarabiques, 3). Paris, Rome: De Boccard, Herder (AIBL, IsMEO).
• Drewes, A.J. & J. Ryckmans 2016. Les inscriptions sudarabes sur bois dans la collection de l’Oosters Instituut conservée dans la bibliothèque universitaire de Leiden. Texte révisé et adapté par Peter Stein, edited by P. Stein & H. Stroomer. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
• Gnoli, G. 1993. Shaqab al-Manaṣṣa. Con diciotto tavole fuori testo (Inventario Delle Iscrizioni Sudarabiche, 3). Paris, Rome: De Boccard, Herder (AIBL, IsMEO).
• Multhoff, A. 2010. tfʿl/ftʿl – Die verbalen t-Stämme im Altsüdarabischen. Folia Orientalia 47: 19–69.
• Robin, C.J. (ed.) 1991. L’Arabie antique de Karibʾīl à Mahomet. Nouvelles données sur l’histoire des Arabes grâce aux inscriptions (Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 61). Aix-en-Provence: Edisud.
• Robin C.J. 1992. Inabbaʾ, Haram, al-Kāfir, Kamna et al-Ḥarāshif. Fasc. A: Les documents. Fasc. B: Les planches (Inventaire des inscriptions sudarabiques, 1). Paris, Rome: De Boccard, Herder (AIBL, IsMEO).
• Rossi, I. 2014. The Minaeans beyond Maʿīn, in O. Elmaz & J.C.E. Watson (eds) Languages of Southern Arabia. Papers from the special session of the Seminar for Arabian Studies held on 27 July 2013: 111–124 (Supplement to the PSAS, 44). Oxford: Archaeopress. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43782855
• Rossi, I. 2022. On the root NḪY in Ancient South Arabian inscriptions: an etymological and contextual study. PSAS 51: 297–312.
• Rossi, I. 2023. Nouvelles listes de femmes étrangères des Minéens et première mention d’Édom en Arabie du Sud, in I. Gajda & F. Briquel-Chatonnet (eds) Arabie – Arabies : volume offert à Christian Julien Robin par ses collègues, ses élèves et ses amis: 151–182. Paris: Geuthner.
• Schiettecatte, J. & M. Arbach 2020. La chronologie du royaume de Maʿīn (VIII^e-I^er siècles av. J.-C.), in I. Zaytsev (ed.) Arabian antiquities. Studies Dedicated to Alexander Sedov on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday: 233–284. Moscow: Oriental Literature Publisher.
• Sjörs, A. 2018. Historical Aspects of Standard Negation in Semitic (Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, 91). Leiden: Brill.
• Stein, P. 2011. Ancient South Arabian, in S. Weninger (ed.) The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook: 1042–1073 (Handbücher Zur Sprach- Und Kommunikationswissenschaft, 36). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, Mouton.
• Stein, P. 2023. Die altsüdarabischen Minuskelinschriften auf Holzstäbchen aus der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in München. Band 2. Die altsabäischen und minäischen Inschriften. Mit einem Anhang: Unbeschriftete Objekte und Fälschungen (Epigraphische Forschungen auf der Arabischen Halbinsel, 10). Wiesbaden: Reichert.