Old South Arabian - Categories of Written Records

Categories of Written Records

  1. Inscriptions in Stone
    1. Votive Inscriptions, often preserve historical accounts of the events that led to the dedication
    2. Inscriptions on Buildings: give the names of the person who commissioned the work and the historical circumstances among other things
    3. Laws and legislation
    4. Protocols and deeds
    5. Inscriptions written for atonement or repentance
    6. Graffiti on Rocks
  2. Literary Texts: if large numbers of any such texts ever existed, they have been almost completely lost
  3. Inscriptions on Wooden Cylinders (only Middle Sabaean and Hadramite). There are about 1000 so far; very few published, mostly in from Nashān, in Wādī Madhāb.
    1. Private Texts
    2. Contracts and orders
  4. Inscriptions on everyday objects


The inscriptions on stone display a very formal and precise wording and expression, whereas the style of the wooden inscriptions written in the cursive script is much more informal.

Read more about this topic:  Old South Arabian

Famous quotes containing the words categories of, categories, written and/or records:

    “Kitsch ... is one of the major categories of the modern object. Knick-knacks, rustic odds-and-ends, souvenirs, lampshades, and African masks: the kitsch-object is collectively this whole plethora of “trashy,” sham or faked objects, this whole museum of junk which proliferates everywhere.... Kitsch is the equivalent to the “cliché” in discourse.”
    —Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)

    “Kitsch ... is one of the major categories of the modern object. Knick-knacks, rustic odds-and-ends, souvenirs, lampshades, and African masks: the kitsch-object is collectively this whole plethora of “trashy,” sham or faked objects, this whole museum of junk which proliferates everywhere.... Kitsch is the equivalent to the “cliché” in discourse.”
    —Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)

    “This is what no one warns you about, when you decide to have children. There is so much written about the cost and the changes in your way of life, but no one ever tells you that what they are going to hand you in the hospital is power, whether you want it or not.... I should have known, but somehow overlooked for a time, that parents become, effortlessly, just by showing up, the most influential totems in the lives of their children.”
    —Anna Quindlen (20th century)

    “It’s always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it’s always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.”
    —Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)