MINIVANS. A Yemenite people who played an important part in the early history of Arabia. The native name was Ila`in; hence the Greek Aletvaiot or Mtpaiot. It is possible that the name was originally .11wriii. which has been identified by some scholars with Mayan, a country south east of Babylonia, referred to as early as the in scriptions of Naram Sin of Agade in the fourth millennium B.C. and Gudea of Lagash e.3000 But the identification is doubtful. There is good reason for supposing that the „Alin:vans are mentioned in .Judges x. P.2; in I. Cbron. iv. 41. in connection with the Amalckit es against whom the tribe of Simeon made a raid in the time of Hezekiah : in 11. Chron. xx. 1 among the enemies of Jehoshaphat; in 11. Chron. xxvi. 7 in con nection with Philistines and Arabs in the days of ITzziah; and in Job ii. 11, where the Greek rendering suggests that Zophar was a Mimpan. While there are many references in the Assyrian inscriptions to Kedar, Nebayoth, Arihi, and Sheba (q.v.), there is no mention of a kingdom of .Among classical writers, Eratosthencs c.275-1 95 B.C. / .Apitharchicles (c.I it.c.), Strabo (died (.22-1 A.D.), Pliny t.A.e. 23-79), the .Voris Erythru'i (c.5G-57 A.D.), and Ptolemy (second century A.D.), speak of the :\lin a.ans as one of many peoples in Southwest but have no knowledge concerning the earlier his tory of this nation. The fact that there was an extensive and flourishing .Mimean kingdom in .1rabia is known only through the native inscrip tions. These have been secured. chiefly through the personal elTorts of 1)ouglity, Euting, and (:laser. 1\lany of these inseriptions still remain unpublished. :\lost of them are very brief and are readily interpreted. hut a few of the longer ones present considerable difficulty. ...1s to the period from which these inscriptions eome there was practical unanimity among scholars until Iss9. It seemed impossible that they could be older than the earlist Sabiean inscriptions (see and it was supposed that the Min ivan and 1:ingdonis flourished side by side, Such eminent scholars as 1). II.
:\lordtmann. Ilartinann, and Eduard Neyer still adhere to this view, granting that sonic may be as old as the sixth century B.C., but maintaining that the bulk of them were written nearer the era that begins in n.e. 115. They point out that while the earlier inscriptions of the Sab:can officials known as ninharrib are written boustro pliedon, there is no Alin:ran inscription thus running both ways: that in the famous inscrip tion. 535, there seems to be a reference to the AIedes which would place it. in the sixth century; -that Eratosthenes apparently knows of kinds reigning at Kama, and that the name Ptidemy occurs in a Nimean inscription on an Egyptian sarcophagus. illaser, however, in 1S99. presented reasons for believing that tlw :\lillican kingdom preceded the Saba.an: niid I lommel, NVinclicr, Schmidt, 1)erenbourg, largoliouth, and have ,advanced argu ments in favor of his position. The silence of the Saba-u1 inscriptions concerning a Alimean king dom would he very strange. if these nations 'Acre for a long time powerful rivals: and the easual referenees to Shelia in inscriptions do not seem to harmonize with the position of this power in the centuries preeeding n.c. I IS. That the .\ssyrians make no mention of while they ;Ire frequently oeenpied with Sheba, ap parently inilieate: the deeliiw of the former and the rising importance of the latter. III its most flourishing period the Alinwan kingdom extended far to the north, as is evident not only from the inscription; found at El (1e1.1„ but also from the mention if the .1fa•i1it Ilazrati in Ilalevy 535. extensive a kingdom with its centre in the South Arabian data, where its great cities.
1:arnawn. and Yathil were. can scarcely Lane existed side hy side with a Saluran kingdom with the neighboring for its capital. A long inscription found lit Sirwalt. unfortunately not yet published, aeeording to to destruction of the hy a 'skean maknih about fix. 5511. 7'2.1-7115 e011i pont ry (tannin is not yet designated as king. As 'Milner has clearly proved that the innkarrib preceded the kings of Sheba. the inferenee seem: necessary that the 1\lin:can kingdom flourished before the Sabrcan mukarrib period and fell before the ri,e of the Sab:tan kingdom. The i\limeall system of writing shows in many re spects a closer affinity to the earlier rather than the later Sabwan script; and the oldest Saliwan inscriptions indicate a long period of develop ment of the South Arabian system .of writing. Hence the fact that the earliest in scriptions are written boustrophedon does not show that this script has been recently introduced. A comparison of the language clearly manifests the higher age of the 51 I mean which has preserved the s in the causa tive and in the pronominal suffixes against the h in the Sabwan. The identification of the INadhas as Sides is extremely doubtful. That the )1inwans continued to exist as a people long after their power in Arabia had passed to others is evident from the I:reek writers. Whether Eratosthencs drew upon older sources accessible to him in Alexandria, was imperfectly informed, or actually knew of petty kings reigning in I:arnit in his day, no scholar would seriously maintain that the power reflected in the Mintean inscriptions could have been exercised. from Karim in the third century BA!. If the sarcoph agus inscription is really Nimpan rather than Hadramoutian and Talmith is Ptolemy, its con tent shows not more clearly the survival of ancient forms, along with some very late one., among the Ninreans of the period than the :di settee of any important Ninwan kingdom at that time. It therefore seems exceedingly probable that the twenty-six kings of Mein known front the inscriptions reigned before there was any Sab:can king in Slarib. .\s it is scarcely credi ble that should have given us the name of all Nimean kings or that the twenty-six names represent an unbroken succession, it would be hazardous to infer that the earliest of them cannot have reigned more than four or five cen turies before the last. There may have been more than one dynasty. As among the Salheans, so in the kingdom of .1heitt each year seems to have been named after two mukarrib or high oliieials. like the limtni in Assyria, the archon,: in Athens. the ephors in Sparta. or the consuls in Rome. The absolute age of the Minwan king dom cannot ho determined. The early occurrence of numerous place-names in Southern Syria and Northwestern Arabia whieh seem to have been transferred from the raids of Alin:cans upon Palestine in the period of the Judges. and the essentially Yemenite eharaeler of the tradi tions brought by clans afterwards forming, a part of the people of Israel, from the North Arabian Nuzri (see Pt-Act is or EcveT) to Canaan, ren der it probable that kings of Ila•in extended their power to the borders of Palestine as early as the thirteenth century MC. The Ni Iri:en11.-; Were to a large extent a settled people living in eities, cul the soil, worshiping in sanetuaries. Their chief gods were a male deity, Allitar (see IsitrAn), the solar goddess Shanisi, Wade, and Ankarih. They had priests and priestesses, hiero dules and sacred prostitutes, a saeriticial eult, mid many rules of taboo. A deeper religious sense is apparent than in the period of skepticism and syneretism preceding Neiallned.