South Semitic Alphabet

South Semitic alphabet, any of a group of minor scripts originating in the Arabian Peninsula in about 1000 bc, possibly related to the writing system used in the Sinaitic inscriptions. These scripts, most of which were used only in the Arabian Peninsula, are of note because of their great age and because of the lack of any clear link between them and the North Semitic alphabet, which dates from about 1100 bc and is probably ancestral to all subsequent alphabetic scripts except the South Semitic group. The South Semitic alphabets generally have 28 letters, all representing consonants, and were usually written from right to left. Seven (possibly eight) of the letters resemble North Semitic letters of the same phonetic value.

Of nine distinct scripts, only Safaitic, Sabaean, and Ethiopic occur outside the Arabian Peninsula; the Ethiopic alphabet, developed from Sabaean in Ethiopia, is the only one still in use. Its modern form is sometimes called Amharic. Compare North Semitic alphabet.