Safaitic Inscriptions

Anonymous / nomadic Ancient North Arabian tribes of the Syro-Arabian desert · c. 1st century BC - 4th century AD · Harra basalt desert (Jordan) · other

Tens of thousands of short graffiti carved by nomadic herders into desert basalt record names, genealogies, laments, and complaints rather than royal proclamations, giving Ancient North Arabia the largest surviving body of ordinary, non-elite ancient writing anywhere in the region, alongside the smaller related Hismaic corpus further south.