Sab'yn Status

**Elmetiacos** · 12-10-2008, 21:03

I was told a while ago that nobody was currently working on this faction for EB or EB2 and hence the team had had to put in Greek or Hebrew names as placeholders for some units. While surfing for information on Hamitic/Celtic syntactical similarities for another thread, I happened upon this website with its large database: http://starling.rinet.ru/index2.php?lan=en which includes Epigraphic South Arabian. There are words like 'FRS.N for "horsemen" GYS2 for "army unit, detachment" which could be used to get reasonable approximations of Sabaean unit names... or is this already being done?

**bovi** · 12-11-2008, 08:03

No, this isn't being done. Thanks, I'm sure that will be useful

.

**Ibrahim** · 12-11-2008, 16:47

Originally Posted by Elmetiacos

I was told a while ago that nobody was currently working on this faction for EB or EB2 and hence the team had had to put in Greek or Hebrew names as placeholders for some units. While surfing for information on Hamitic/Celtic syntactical similarities for another thread, I happened upon this website with its large database: http://starling.rinet.ru/index2.php?lan=en which includes Epigraphic South Arabian. There are words like 'FRS.N for "horsemen" GYS2 for "army unit, detachment" which could be used to get reasonable approximations of Sabaean unit names... or is this already being done?

they sound very familiar to me: the first is like fursān, and the second like jaish.

It just donned on me: why didn't EB use Arabic as a placeholder? (up until Elmetiacos found this)

EDIT: what has hamitic to do with Celtic (beside maybe a few loanwords)? and how do I find the dictionary you decribe in the website(Epigraphic S. Arabian)?

EDIT: never mind-got it.

**Elmetiacos** · 12-12-2008, 02:10

Originally Posted by Ibrahim

EDIT: what has hamitic to do with Celtic (beside maybe a few loanwords)?

It started in the 18th Century in a silly way, with Welshmen trying to draw false analogies with Hebrew to prove the antiquity of Welsh, but more recently some people have drawn different parallels, mainly the unusual word order of modern insular Celtic languages, which are apparently more like Hamitic or Semitic than Indo-European. It's been used to argue that an Afro-Asiatic language was spoken in the British Isles, either as a pre-Celtic substrate or in a Phoenician trading colony. I was on the same mailing list as a Celticist called Alex Kondratiev a few years ago and we floated the idea that the non-Celtic Pictish oghams could be Hamitic on the basis that the Picts were supposedly matrilinear and the syllable ETT kept appearing, so it could be the feminine T affix. Following this reasoning the inscription at Lunasting (E)TTUCUHETTSAHEHHTANNNHCCVVEVVNEHHTON starts t-wkw-t sa... which suggests a goddess whose name means bright or shining (3152) is asked to do something to someone. The theory didn't really take off...

**oudysseos** · 12-12-2008, 08:58

I've been reading my Cunliffe as a result of the Irish/Celts thread, and the claim is not quite that there was an afro-asiatic language spoken as a whole, but that there was a lingua franca that developed as a result of bronze age trade networks (Cunliffe thinks that there were two competing networks), stretching from Carthage to the British Isles, and that this largely celtic lingua franca was influenced in some way by the punic speaking traders. He also concedes that there may be alternate causes for the correspondences.

I believe that there is a German (Vonnenman? or something like that) who has a theory about semitic Picts. But I'm not familiar with it.

**Elmetiacos** · 12-12-2008, 12:49

Vennemann - he thinks that there was such a language spoken all over Western Europe.

**lobf** · 12-12-2008, 19:36

And Jesus really lived in America.

**Elmetiacos** · 12-13-2008, 19:06

Originally Posted by Elmetiacos

Vennemann - he thinks that there was such a language spoken all over Western Europe.

Hmm, actually, he seems to believe that it was a language related to Basque and Aquitanian that was spoken all over Western Europe; Semitic was limited to Britain.

**Ibrahim** · 12-13-2008, 22:19

Originally Posted by Elmetiacos

It started in the 18th Century in a silly way, with Welshmen trying to draw false analogies with Hebrew to prove the antiquity of Welsh, but more recently some people have drawn different parallels, mainly the unusual word order of modern insular Celtic languages, which are apparently more like Hamitic or Semitic than Indo-European. It's been used to argue that an Afro-Asiatic language was spoken in the British Isles, either as a pre-Celtic substrate or in a Phoenician trading colony. I was on the same mailing list as a Celticist called Alex Kondratiev a few years ago and we floated the idea that the non-Celtic Pictish oghams could be Hamitic on the basis that the Picts were supposedly matrilinear and the syllable ETT kept appearing, so it could be the feminine T affix. Following this reasoning the inscription at Lunasting (E)TTUCUHETTSAHEHHTANNNHCCVVEVVNEHHTON starts t-wkw-t sa... which suggests a goddess whose name means bright or shining (3152) is asked to do something to someone. The theory didn't really take off...

thanks for enlightening me.