The States were built up of tribes mostly held together by local ties not by blood bonds. A tribe contained an aristocracy, tenant vassals, resident aliens and serfs. The name 15.ataban stood for the kingdom and for the tribes composing it; all were children of the god 'Amm. In Saba the tribe of that name stood apart from the others and held a commanding position in the kingdom. The common phrase is "Saba and the tribes." Saba alone is the child of 'lmkh. Later it was put on a level with the other tribes, and was merged in the militia. The king, tribal aristocrats and the temples were the great landholders. Under the form of government in Kataban (prob ably much the same in the other States) the king was helped and to some extent controlled by a council of elders, though general policy was decided by the assembly of the tribes. In this the serfs had of course no place. At a later time in Saba the government became feudal; no longer did the tribal assembly decide the alloca tion of the land, the king granted fiefs. The change may have been helped by the example of the temples, where the retainers had to obey the orders of the god whose land they tilled. The offices of Mkrb and king were hereditary and the latter seems often to have associated his son with himself. The land paid three taxes which are never mentioned separately. The amount paid is not known but it was assessed while the crops were stand ing. Taxes were paid to the temples also ; the tithe is named. Public works were done by forced labour. No list of customs, duties or tolls has been found. In early times the title Kbr is given to the chief of a tribe or clan, the governor of a town or district, the chief of the king's serfs and the head of a college of officials; thus there were many offices with one name. Down to the latest times a Kbr was the eponym after whom the year was named. Kyl is first heard of as the name of a leading section of a tribe in the territory of the god Ta'lab Riyam. The ancestors of a petty king are also called 1371. So it is probable that he was part of the tribal organisation and took the place of the Kbr. The Kyn was an administrative officer to serve princes, temples or cities. One was a priest. The name suggests that he was not a part of the tribal organisation.
Monuments of the south Arabians have been found in Kuweit and Mesopotamia; a coffin of a dealer in spices was found in Egypt and an altar with a bilingual dedica tion to Wadd in Delos. Spices and incense were the chief exports and re-exports. The road from Hadramaut ran through the cap itals of the other three States, so it is not surprising that one tried to make itself supreme. The returning caravans certainly brought back female slaves for the temple service ; women from Gaza and Yathrib (Medina) are mentioned. The production of incense was in the hands of the nobles, 3,00o families Pliny says, and was surrounded with various tabus, besides a tithe paid to the temple at Sabwat. Great care was given to irrigation and the terracing of the hills into fields. The people were fine masons and stonecutters. The dam at Marib is now in much the same condition as when Hamdani (A.D. 848) saw it. The buildings were made of stone so carefully dressed that often the joints are scarcely visible; the stones are held together by leaden dowels and pillars are strengthened by mortise and tenon joints. Big
buildings were often elaborately decorated and several forms of pillars and capitals were in use. The Arab tales of lofty houses with windows of translucent stone are not much exaggerated. The pointed arch was known. Many of the old cisterns are still in use. Many of the inscriptions are beautiful and testify to the skill of the stone-cutters, who were successful with the figures of animals and conventional foliage in low relief. Figures in the round were less good and in statues of men the body is usually a mere block while the face is wooden and expressionless and often out of proportion. Stone pots and jars for household use are simple but neat and well shaped. Most of the metal work that survives is figures of animals and tablets with inscriptions. The figures are generally crude. One can never be sure that the jewellery, pottery and similar small articles really belong to the land and the period. The best things suggest foreign influence or even origin. At first the coins followed Athenian models and the workmanship is very good in some. Later they degenerated till the owl looks like a jar with two round handles. Curiously the standard is Babylonian. The latest coins are weak imitations of Roman coins.
The inscriptions are all on stone or metal. Words are separated by a divider and the let ters are never joined. In early times the characters are angular but later the corners are rounded and curves appear. The alpha bet is connected with the Phoenician ; some of the letters are exactly alike, some look as if they had been purposely altered by those who understood the art of carving in stone, and some not found in Phoenician are formed by differentiation from those that are. Short inscriptions have been found in Mesopotamia in which Sabaean letters are combined with others resembling the Phoenician and Greek forms. It is not certain whether this is an early form of the alphabet or merely a freak. There are 29 let ters, the 28 of Arabic and the second form of s which is found in Hebrew. The language is classified with Abyssinian as south Semitic and is split into several dialects which differ in gram matical forms and vocabulary. In Ma'in and Kataban s is used in the pronoun of the third person and in the causative form of the verb where Sabaean has h. Hadramaut has forms which are phonetically later than the other dialects. The vowels are not in dicated so the pronunciation of all words is a matter of guess work. The writing is usually from right to left but some of the oldest inscriptions read alternately from right to left and from left to right. This is occasionally found in later ones but then for special reasons. Presumably there was a literature but it has disappeared. Sabaean inscriptions have been found in Abyssinia and the Ethiopic alphabet is derived from the south Arabian. Inscriptions in various alphabets derived from the Sabaean are found in different parts of Arabia as far north as Damascus and testify to the widespread influence of the south Arabian kingdoms. Many of the south Arabian inscriptions are hard to interpret and the sense highly problematical.