The city-states of the Jawf at the dawn of Ancient South Arabian history (8th-6th centuries BCE). I. From cities to kingdoms

International audienceThe cradle of a flourishing three-thousand-year-old civilisation, Yemen acquired from the beginning of the 1st millennium BC a specific political, religious and social system. During this period of formation and constitution of the South Arabian kingdoms, South Arabia was marked by the presence of multiple political entities made up of cities/tribes, the most documented of which are from the Jawf region – Nashshān, Kamna, Haram, Qarnā, Inabbaʾ, which are the main subjects of this book. These city-States shared, in addition to a common language, Minaic, a religious iconography unique in Arabia of Mesopotamian inspiration. Each city-state had its monarchical institution, its own pantheon and social organization.The military conquests carried out by the kingdom of Sabaʾ at the beginning of the 7th century BC brought about the inevitable gradual disappearance of the city-states in South Arabia and their integration into the great kingdoms, Sabaʾ and Maʿīn for the cities-States of the Jawf, and Qatabān and Ḥaḍramawt for the city-states of the southern highlands, in the 6th century BCE.It is from this period of formation of the city-states and kingdoms of South Arabia (8th–6th centuries BCE) that the idea for this book was born. Its pages, in the light of the latest epigraphic and archaeological discoveries, offer up a historical reconstruction of the relative chronology of events and reigns during this period. In summary it presents an inventory of research on the history of ancient Yemen in the 8th–6th centuries BCE