Once in a while, here after a century of research, Prof. Dr. Ahmad Al-Jallad, a Jordanian-American philologist, epigraphist, and a historian of language might be on a break to decipher some enigmatic ancient South-Arabic scripts.
Exciting stuff, as this ancient pre-Islamic language indigenous to South Arabia, also occurs on Socotra Island. While the experts are working on it right now, it might soon open the door towards a new fascinating chapter in the cultural history of Arabia.
Al-Jallad concluded the script most likely descended from a script called Thamudic B. That script was widely used on the northern side of the Arabian Peninsula, in what is today the Saudi Arabian province of Najd.
A nice summary can be found here: https://www.science.org/content/article/mysterious-pre-islamic-script-oman-finally-deciphered
The article itself is available here: https://www.academia.edu/129778573/Al_Jallad_2025_The_Decipherment_of_the_Dhofari_Script_Three_hal%E1%B8%A5am_abecedaries_and_the_first_glimpses_into_the_corpus
Picture website IASA
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