World culture: Language of the Queen of Sheba deciphered

Researchers from Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (Germany) have succeeded in deciphering 2000-year old Arabic inscriptions. The writings are inscribed on palm-sticks which by size and form resemble a cigar. So far scholars have failed to cast light on the pre-Islamic period of Arab history, revealed in written sources. Now though the things have changed.

Peter Stein from the University of Jena and his co-workers have spent six years deciphering pre-Islamic texts. Wooden sticks featuring inscriptions were discovered in the 1980s among antique ruins in the north of Yemen. These written sources provided on 400 palm-sticks today make the collection of the Bavarian State Library in Munich.

Now historians are able to read letters, treaties, goods’ labels and other documents written by entrepreneurs and traders of the Arabia before the introduction of Islam in this region. Sticks bear inscriptions in dead Semitic languages. Frankfurter Rundschau reads that orientalist Doctor Peter Stein is among the few specialists able to read these languages.

The Sabaean language was the language of an antique kingdom in the present-day Yemen. People in the south-west of the Arabian Peninsula spoke it until 10th century. The Minaean language was spoken in one of neighboring states. Deciphering of ancient Arabia’s palm-stick texts can be compared with deciphering of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and cuneiform of Mesopotamian clay tablets.