Corpus of Northern Middle Sabaic Inscriptions (work in progress)
The Northern Middle Sabaic inscriptions are those Middle Sabaic texts originating from the areas of the town of Haram in the Jawf valley and of the wādī Shuḍayf north of it. The corpus is made up of a small number of inscriptions left by the members of the tribes of ʾmrm, Ḥnk and ʿṯtr.
Their epigraphic language, elsewhere named Amīritic, Haramic or pseudo-Sabaic, shows peculiar traits listed as follows by P. Stein (2011. Ancient South Arabian, in Weninger S. (ed.), The Semitic Languages. Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 36): “the distinction of only two unvoiced sibilants (s and š, missing ś), formation of the 1st and 2nd persons SC after a pattern fʿlt (not fʿlk, as common in ASA), a preposition mn (instead of the common bn), and a negation lm, followed by a PC verbal form denoting past actions)”.
Most of the inscriptions are confession inscriptions concerning purity transgression, originating from the temples of the god ḏ-S¹mwy.
Most of the inscriptions are confession inscriptions concerning purity transgression, originating from the temples of the god ḏ-S¹mwy.