page_title: Old Arabic
section_title: 2nd century CE
hierarchical_section_title: Old Arabic / History / 2nd century CE
caption_attribution_description: English: Avdat: view from top of Tell Avdat to the Negev Photo by Uri Juda
context_page_description: Old Arabic is the earliest attested stage of the Arabic language, beginning with its differentiation from related Central Semitic dialects in the Syrian desert in the early 1st millennium BCE until the emergence of the Arab grammatical tradition in the 8th century CE. Originally written in a variety of scripts, it came to be expressed primarily in a modified Nabataean script after the demise of the Nabataean Kingdom.
context_section_description: Following the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 135 CE, literary sources inform that Judea and the Negev repopulated by pagans. The shift in toponymy towards an Arabic pronunciation, which is only apparent in Greek transcription, would suggest that many of these pagans were drawn from Provincia Arabia. This seems to be recognized by the author of the Madaba map in his entry on Beersheba: ‘Bērsabee which is now Bērossaba’. Compound toponyms with an o-vowel in between their two components (cf. Abdomankō) are reminiscent of an Arabic pronunciation, and probably have their origin in Arabic calques of earlier Canaanite place names.
  The En Avdat inscription dates to no later than 150 CE, and contains a prayer to the deified Nabataean king Obodas I:
caption: Temple of Obodas
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