Close-up of an alabaster plaque with a Sabaean inscription in the formal Masnad script, placed within a cartouche.
Himyarite, c. 1st century AD.

Sabaean, also sometimes known as Ḥimyarite, was an Old South Arabian language spoken in Yemen from c. 1000 BC to the 6th century AD, by the Sabaeans; it was used as a written language by some other peoples (sha‘bs) of Ancient Yemen, including the Ḥimyarites. The Sabaean language belongs to the South Arabian subgroup of the Semitic group of the Afro-Asiatic language family.

Sabaean was written in the South Arabian alphabet, and like Hebrew and Arabic marked only consonants, the only indication of vowels being with ‘Matres Lectionis’. For many years the only texts discovered were inscriptions in the formal Masnad script (Sabaean ms3nd), but in 1973 documents in another minuscule and cursive script were discovered, dating back to the second half of the 1st century BC.

Correspondent: J.M.Criel, Antwerpen.
Sources: ‘Les Arabes’ (Henri Stierlin), Genève 1983 & Wikipedia.