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SOUTH SEMITIC ALPHABETS short rock-graffiti; and were incised by ancient nomad populations which did not play a great part in history.
The North Arabian inscriptions (Fig. 110, col. III-V, and 112) can be separated into three groups: (1) Thamudene or Thamudic (Fig. 110, col. IV, and 112, 3-7); about 1.750 inscriptions are extant; the upper dates are uncertain, some scholars date them as early as the middle of the first millennium B.C.; the most recent ones belong to the fourth century A.D. Thamudic inscriptions have been found all over northwestern Arabia, and they are generally of religious character.
The great authority on the subject, Prof. F. V. Winnett, classifies the Thamudic inscriptions into five groups: (a) attributed to the fifth century B.C.; (b) belonging to the Hellenistic period; (c) ascribed to the first two centuries A.D.; (d) assigned to the Roman period (ca, third century A.D.); and (e) placed in about the fourth century A.D.
(2) The Dedanite inscriptions (Dedan, the present oasis al-'Ula, an important and ancient trade depot in the north of the Hejaz, was for some time an independent state) belonging partly to the middle of the first millennium B.C.--the oldest of them, being attributed by Prof. Winnett to about the sixth century B.C., and by Prof. Albright to the seventh century B.C., "i.e., to about the same time as the oldest South Arabian inscriptions now known"-and the Lihyanian or Lihyanite inscriptions, Fig. 110, col. III, (numbering about 400 and written in a script which can be considered as neo-Dedanite), belonging probably to the fifth-second centuries B.C., have been found mainly in the district of the oasis of al-'Ula.
The Lihyanite inscriptions can be divided into two groups; one belonging to the fifth century E.C. (according to Winnett) or to the fifththird centuries B.c. (Albright); and the other belonging according to Winnett to the first half of the fourth century B.c., or, more probably, to the third-second centuries B.C. (Albright).
(3) The Safaitic or Safahitic inscriptions (Fig. 110, col. V), which have been found in a still greater number than the Thamudene inscriptions, come mainly from the volcanic rocks in the district of es-Safa, to the south-east of Damascus. They belong to the first two centuries A.D.
ORIGIN OF SOUTH SEMITIC ALPHABETS
The origin of the South Semitic alphabets is still an open problem. There are a few theories, but besides the unlikely opinion of the French orientalist Dussaud and some other scholars, who connect the South Semitic scripts with the Greek alphabet, there are three principal theories:
(1) Some scholars consider the Sabzan alphabet on the one hand as the parent of all the other South Semitic scripts, and on the other hand as an offshoot of the North Semitic alphabet; the first part of this theory is almost generally accepted. Concerning its second part, it is noteworthy
