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The Decipherment of the Dhofari Script: Three halḥam abecedaries and the first glimpses into the corpus
Ahmad Al-Jallad, 2025. Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap Ex Oriente Lux (JEOL) 49.
Identifies three painted inscriptions as abecedaries in the South Semitic halḥam letter order and uses them to assign sound values to the glyphs of Script 1 (variant 1a); finds the letter shapes closest to North Arabian scripts, especially Thamudic B; notes mergers of interdentals with sibilants; gives first readings of texts and argues the language is related to, but not ancestral to, the Modern South Arabian languages such as Mehri and Jibbali. Zenodo record published 10 July 2025.
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The decipherment claim at the centre of the mystery.
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doi.org · fetched 27 Oct 2026
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Al-Jallad, A. (2025). The Decipherment of the Dhofari Script: Three halḥam abecedaries and the first glimpses into the corpus. Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap Ex Oriente Lux (JEOL) 49. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15853466
@article{aljallad2025decipherment,
author = {Al-Jallad, Ahmad},
title = {The Decipherment of the Dhofari Script: Three halḥam abecedaries and the first glimpses into the corpus},
journal = {Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap Ex Oriente Lux (JEOL) 49},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.15853466},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15853466}
}TY - JOUR TI - The Decipherment of the Dhofari Script: Three halḥam abecedaries and the first glimpses into the corpus AU - Al-Jallad, Ahmad PY - 2025 JO - Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap Ex Oriente Lux (JEOL) 49 DO - 10.5281/zenodo.15853466 UR - https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15853466 ER -
Al-Jallad, Ahmad. “The Decipherment of the Dhofari Script: Three halḥam abecedaries and the first glimpses into the corpus.” Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap Ex Oriente Lux (JEOL) 49 (2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15853466.