Department of Linguistics

This is a proposal to encode the Old South Arabian script in the international character encoding standard Unicode. The script was published in Unicode Standard version 5.2 in October 2009. The script was used from the 8c BCE until 6c CE on the Arabian peninsula, especially in the area of present-day Yemen. It was used to write various southwest Semitic languages of various cultures, such as Minean, Sabaean, Qatabanian, Hadramite, and Himyaritic. Eventually the script was supplanted by the Arabic script.