in the group of Arabic is to be included the South Arabian or Himyaritic, called also Sabman, which extends along the south coast of Arabia from the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb on the west to the mouth of the Persian Gulf on the east. Inscriptions found in great num bers particularly in the province of Yemen are in the ancient Himyantic, dating to the 3d and 4th centuries of our era. None of the monuments in that dialect are older thin the 7th century. The paucity of vowels in the inscriptions renders its knowledge more diffi cult, but the resemblances to Arabic are marked. Geez or Ethiopic is the language of the Abyssinians — its modern dialects are found in the Tigre and Amharic in the mountainous regions southwest of Arabia. The oldest Ethiopic monuments — apart from the Ethiopic version of the Bible — are a few inscriptions which date from the first five or six centuries of our era. When the ancient language had died out among the people it was still cultivated by the priesthood. Its litera ture is largely modern, consisting of transla tions from the Coptic and more often from the Arabic from the 13th to the 16th centuries.
Bibliography.— Caspari,
Grammar' (Oxford) ; Crow, F. E.,
Manual' (Lon don 1901) ; Dirr, A.,
Egyptian Arabic' (London 1904) ; Forbes, D.,
Grammar' (London) ; Green, A. 0.,