Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/753

 HIMYAEITES 735 " the red," and the real name of the son of Abd Shems was Ghazahaj. The children of Himyar at first shared the royalty with other families, especially that of Kahtan. The Arab historians do not supply a complete list of the successors of Himyar or Ghazahaj. Him- yar's brother Kahlan, and "Wathil, Alamluk, and Shammir, are named as his successors. An Assyrian inscription speaks of Yathaamir, on whom Sargon imposed a tribute of gold, spices, horses, and camels. Esarhaddon also seems to have made an expedition to South Arabia. A large number of Arabs emigrated to Ethiopia during several centuries preceding our era. About 100 B. C. the supreme power was concentrated in the house of Himyar, and caused the ancient name of Sabseans, given to the southern Arabs, to be replaced by that of Himyarites. (See SABSEANS.) In the account of the expedition of JElius Gallus in 24 B. 0., the Himyarites appear for the first time under the name of Homerites. The most flourishing period of the Himyarites appears to have com- menced with Harith er-Baish, whom Caussin de Perceval places about 100 B. 0., and ended with Dhu Norvas and his successor, who were defeated by the Abyssinians in A. D. 525. South Arabia subsequently fell under the do- minion of the Persians, and in 629 the Him- yarites succumbed to Mohammed and accept- ed Islam. (See ARABIA, and YEMEN.) Direct descendants of the ancient Himyarites are the tribes of Mahrah. They are black in color, me- dium in stature, Semitic in countenance, strong and sinewy in structure. Their dress is a cloth for the loins and another for the head. The women are covered with a kind of shawl, and wear pantaloons and veils only in towns. A man with breeches would be an object of ridicule. They belong to the orthodox sect of the Shafei. The so-called Himyar - itic language, or, better, the language of the Saba3ans, says Osiander, seems to form with Arabic and Ethiopic the southern branch of the Semitic family, and stands in a peculiar relation at once of agreement and disagree- ment to both in common and to each separate- ly. In common with Arabic, it possesses the whole delicate system of sounds, the diph- thongs, the laws of the transmutation of sounds, and several peculiarities of the verb. In com- mon with Ethiopic, it has its type of a graphic system, the want of the article, and many words not found in other kindred languages. It differs from Arabic and Ethiopic by termi- nating the imperfect in n, in the form of the infinitive, and other grammatical peculiarities. Several of its characteristics it has only in common with Hebrew and Assyrian ; in oth- ers it resembles the Aramaic. Several schol- ars therefore do not classify Himyaritic as a dialect of Arabic, but consider it an indepen- dent language, and possibly an elder sister of Hebrew and Assyrian. Renan also considers the Himyaritic too widely different from Ara- bic to group them together. Karsten Kie- 407 VOL. viii. 47 buhr (1774) was the first who called attention to the existence of inscriptions in a peculiar character in the southern districts of Arabia. In 1810 Dr. Seetzen, a German traveller, fol- lowed up the indications of Niebuhr, and dis- covered at Zhafar three inscriptions, and five others built into the walls of the mosque of the neighboring village of Mankat. The next dis- coveries were made by various officers of the Palinurus, a vessel of the British Indian navy, stationed in the Eed sea in order to make a survey of the coast. In 1843 Arnaud copied 56 inscriptions at Sana, Khariba, Marib, and the so-called Haram of Bilkis. Baron von "Wrede discovered inscriptions on a dike in the wady WebenehinHadramaut, and Kennett Loftus came upon a tomb closed in with a rough sandstone slab inscribed in the Himyar- itic character, while making excavations in the mounds at Warka, in southern Babylonia. The British museum has also two gems with Himyaritic characters brought from Babylonia, and two others of which the history is un- known. Coghlan and Playfair presented the museum with a number of bronze tablets, prin- cipally dedications to Almakah, discovered by them at Amran, near Sana. An altar of lime- stone dedicated to Athtor was found at Ibyan or Abyan, about 30 m. N. E. of Aden. Sev- eral inscriptions have been found also on the dike at Marib. Many others have recently been found, which have increased the collec- tion to several hundred specimens. It is prob- able that the larger number of these monu- ments must be referred to the later and more flourishing period of the Himyarite kings, be- tween 100 B. 0. and A. D. 500. Two inscrip- tions have been discovered bearing dates, one from Sana dated 573, and one from Hisn Ghorab dated 604. It does not appear how- ever that it has been determined by what era these dates are calculated. Several Arabic writers have preserved to us alphabets of the Himyaritic character, which is called Musned by them, with the corresponding Arabic letters. These alphabets have formed the basis of the interpretation of the inscriptions by modern orientalists. The latter are in horizontal lines, generally from right to left, but occasionally a ooustropliedon mode is adopted^ chiefly where the lines are of great length. The words are usually separated from each other by a verti- cal stroke, which has greatly facilitated the interpretation of the inscriptions. This was discovered from the fact that in certain for- mulas which frequently occur a word would sometimes terminate exactly at the end of a line, leaving no space for the upright stroke, which was then altogether omitted, showing that it was not an integral part of the writing. The inscription which we give is copied from a copper tablet sent by Prideaux from Aden. Prsetorius, in the ZeiUchrift der Morgenlan- discTien GesellscTiaft (1872), has advanced the opinion that it is a forgery like many others, as Von Maltzan has discovered that a Jewish cop-