# South Semitic scripts

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{{Short description|Family of writing systems that split from the Proto-Sinaitic script}}
{{Infobox writing system
| name        = South Semitic scripts
| type        = [Abjad](/source/Abjad)
| direction   = right-to-left
| languages   = [Old South Arabian](/source/Old_South_Arabian), [Ge'ez](/source/Ge'ez), [Dadanitic](/source/Dadanitic), [Taymanitic](/source/Taymanitic), [Dumaitic](/source/Dumaitic), [Thamudic](/source/Thamudic), [Safaitic](/source/Safaitic), [Hismaic](/source/Hismaic)
| time        = {{circa|10th century BCE to 6th century AD}}
| fam1        = [Egyptian hieroglyphs](/source/Egyptian_hieroglyphs)
| fam2        = [Proto-Sinaitic script](/source/Proto-Sinaitic_script)
| children    =
*[Ancient North Arabian](/source/Ancient_North_Arabian)
*[Ancient South Arabian](/source/Ancient_South_Arabian_script)
**[Ge'ez](/source/Ge'ez_script)
|sisters = [Phoenician](/source/Phoenician_script)
}}
The '''South Semitic scripts''' are a cluster of [alphabet](/source/alphabet)s that had derived from the [Proto-Sinaitic script](/source/Proto-Sinaitic_script) by the 10th century BC.<ref>Ahmad Al-Jallad, "Script and Orthography", ''An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions'' (Brill, 2015), p. 26.</ref> The family has two main branches: [Ancient North Arabian](/source/Ancient_North_Arabian) (ANA) and [Ancient South Arabian](/source/Old_South_Arabian_script) (ASA).

The scripts were exclusive to the [Arabian Peninsula](/source/Arabian_Peninsula) and the [Horn of Africa](/source/Horn_of_Africa). All the ANA and most of the ASA scripts fell out of use by the 6th century AD. 
[[File:Panel Almaqah Louvre DAO18.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|South Arabian inscription addressed to the Sabaean national god [Almaqah](/source/Almaqah)]]
The exception was [Geʽez](/source/Ge%CA%BDez_script), a child of ASA in use in [Ethiopia](/source/Ethiopia). It and its variants remain in use today for various [Ethiosemitic languages](/source/Ethiosemitic_languages). In Arabia, the South Semitic scripts were replaced by the [Arabic script](/source/Arabic_script), which is descended from the [Nabataean script](/source/Nabataean_script).<ref>Michael Everson and Michael Macdonald, [https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6jv5g061 "Proposal to Encode the Old North Arabian Script in the SMP of the UCS"], ''Proposals from the Script Encoding Initiative'', UC Berkeley, 2010.</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

Category:Semitic writing systems
Category:10th-century BC establishments
Category:6th-century disestablishments

{{abjad-stub}}

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [South Semitic scripts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Semitic_scripts) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Semitic_scripts?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.