The city-states of the Jawf at the dawn of Ancient South Arabian history (8th-6th centuries BCE). III.: A lexical and onomastic index of the inscriptions

International audienceThe numerous epigraphic discoveries of the last two decades have considerably enriched the corpus of the inscriptions from the wādī al-Jawf, especially as regards the textual production of the five city-states which flourished in this region of Yemen between the 8th and the 6th centuries BCE. These texts are amongst the earliest Ancient South Arabian inscriptions known to date and for this reason they are of crucial importance for linguistic research.The present volume, which is the third of the work devoted to the study of The city-states of the Jawf at the dawn of Ancient South Arabian history (8th–6th centuries BCE), is an analytical index of the lexical and onomastic items occurring in the corpus of inscriptions edited in Volume II. Although it is not exhaustive, due to the gaps in the documentation, this corpus offers for the first time a comprehensive view of the Minaic language attested in its first historical phase. At the same time, it includes a number of inscriptions featuring Sabaic morphological features, to be ascribed to the periods of Sabaean alliance or protectorate that some of the Jawf city-states experienced. This volume offers an index of the words attested in the circa 280 texts of the corpus, with their respective lists of occurrences. The lexical items are listed by root and provided with translation, analysis and sample contexts. This approach aims at bringing to light their morphological features and semantic values, as well as their formulaic uses. Names are grouped by onomastic typology; when possible, person names are associated with the relevant historical figures, in order to support the connection with the glossary of proper names provided at the end of Volume I