Nabataean Alphabet Table
| Sign | Kind | Name | Transliteration |
|---|---|---|---|
| 𐢀 | letter (final form) | Aleph — final shape | ʳ [ʔ] |
| 𐢁 | letter | Aleph | ʳ [ʔ] |
| 𐢂 | letter (final form) | Beth — final shape | b [b] |
| 𐢃 | letter | Beth | b [b] |
| 𐢄 | letter | Gimel | g [ɡ] |
| 𐢅 | letter | Daleth | d [d] |
| 𐢆 | letter (final form) | He — final shape | h [h] |
| 𐢇 | letter | He | h [h] |
| 𐢈 | letter | Waw | w [w] |
| 𐢉 | letter | Zayin | z [z] |
| 𐢊 | letter | Heth | h-dot [ħ] |
| 𐢋 | letter | Teth | t-dot [tˌ] |
| 𐢌 | letter (final form) | Yodh — final shape | y [j] |
| 𐢍 | letter | Yodh | y [j] |
| 𐢎 | letter (final form) | Kaph — final shape | k [k] |
| 𐢏 | letter | Kaph | k [k] |
| 𐢐 | letter (final form) | Lamedh — final shape | l [l] |
| 𐢑 | letter | Lamedh | l [l] |
| 𐢒 | letter (final form) | Mem — final shape | m [m] |
| 𐢓 | letter | Mem | m [m] |
| 𐢔 | letter (final form) | Nun — final shape | n [n] |
| 𐢕 | letter | Nun | n [n] |
| 𐢖 | letter | Samekh | s [s] |
| 𐢗 | letter | Ayin | ʹ [ʔ] |
| 𐢘 | letter | Pe | p [p] |
| 𐢙 | letter | Sadhe | s-dot [sˌ] |
| 𐢚 | letter | Qoph | q [q] |
| 𐢛 | letter | Resh | r [r] |
| 𐢜 | letter (final form) | Shin — final shape | sh [ʃ] |
| 𐢝 | letter | Shin | sh [ʃ] |
| 𐢞 | letter | Taw | t [t] |
| 𐢧 | number | Number One | one |
| 𐢨 | number | Number Two | two |
| 𐢩 | number | Number Three | three |
| 𐢪 | number | Number Four | four |
| 𐢫 | number | Cruciform Number Four | cruciform four |
| 𐢬 | number | Number Five | five |
| 𐢭 | number | Number Ten | ten |
| 𐢮 | number | Number Twenty | twenty |
| 𐢯 | number | Number One Hundred | one hundred |
The Nabataean script is the abjad of the traders who built Petra: used from the 2nd century BC to write Nabataean Aramaic and Nabataean Arabic across their caravan kingdom - Petra in Jordan, Hegra (Mada’in Saleh) in Saudi Arabia, Bosra and Namara in Syria, and dense clusters of inscriptions in the Sinai. It descends from the Aramaic alphabet and made history at its other end: a cursive form of Nabataean developed into the Arabic alphabet from the 4th century, so its letterforms sit visibly between the older Semitic scripts and Arabic - each Arabic letter’s ancestor is a row on this chart. The corpus is huge but mostly shallow: 6,000-7,000 published inscriptions, over 95% short dedications and graffiti, most undated, with another 4,000-7,000 Sinaitic inscriptions awaiting publication.
The script grew more loops and ligatures than its Aramaic parent - likely for writing speed - and never fully standardized them; words run without spaces. It was first deciphered in 1840 by Eduard Friedrich Ferdinand Beer. Unicode encodes all 40 codepoints in block U+10880 (version 7.0, 2014), this chart’s verified source: 22 letters (with transliterations), six word-final variant shapes - the ancestors of Arabic’s positional letter logic - and an eight-sign number system (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20, 100).
How to use
- Read the table by kind: the 22 letter rows carry the scholarly transliterations (aleph, beth, gimel... taw - the Aramaic names that Arabic’s alif, ba, jim... still echo), the six final-form rows are word-end variants of nun-class letters, and the number rows build values additively. Vowels follow abjad logic: aleph, waw and yodh double as long-vowel carriers, short vowels unwritten. Because the script had no spaces, parse boundaries by the divine-name formulas - most short inscriptions open with a dedication to a god, which is why the same names (Dushara, Al-lat, Manawat) recur thousands of times.
- Compare the rows against Arabic, which is the fastest way to feel the kinship: beth with Arabic ba, gimel with jim, daleth with dal, and so on - the names match nearly one-to-one. Then watch direction of change: the oldest carved inscriptions are angular and monumental, later ones rounder and more connected, and it is precisely this cursive drift that produced the Arabic script around the 4th century CE. The final-form rows matter most for that story: writing one shape mid-word and another at the end is the seed of Arabic’s initial/medial/final system.
- For practice, the Sinai graffiti are the on-ramp: thousands of short personal inscriptions - a name, a lineage, a blessing - published with transliterations and translations. Take one, match it against this chart, and you are reading Nabataean. Then graduate to the monumental side: Petra’s tomb inscriptions and the Hegra corpus in Saudi Arabia (the southern capital, where entire tomb facades carry dated legal texts) show the script at official length and, usefully for learners, include dated formulas whose numbers you can decode with this chart’s eight number signs.
Frequently asked questions
Is Nabataean really the ancestor of the Arabic alphabet?
Yes by scholarly consensus: a cursive form of Nabataean developed into the Arabic alphabet from the 4th century CE. The evidence is transitional - Nabataean letterforms sit between the older Aramaic family scripts and Arabic, with the same 22+ letter inventory and even the word-final variant shapes that foreshadow Arabic’s positional forms. The Arabic letter names (alif, ba, jim, dal...) descend from these rows’ Aramaic names (aleph, beth, gimel, daleth), and comparing the two charts side by side shows the shapes tightening from carved to cursive.
Who deciphered the Nabataean script?
Eduard Friedrich Ferdinand Beer, in 1840 - the first systematic decipherment, working from the bilingual and contextual evidence of Nabataean inscriptions. After Beer the corpus grew steadily (new collections and the Sinai finds kept refining readings), and today the script is fully legible: the 6,000-7,000 published inscriptions - short dedications, tomb texts, a handful of papyri - are routinely read and translated.
Why are most Nabataean inscriptions so short?
Because most are graffiti: travelers and locals scratched two-to-five-word dedications (“Blessing upon so-and-so”, a name with a lineage) into rock, especially in the Sinai, where thousands of such texts cluster along routes. Over 95% of the published corpus is these short texts or graffiti, most undated; the monumental side - Petra and Hegra tomb inscriptions with legal formulas and dates - is the smaller but information-denser part of the record.
What are the final-form letters on this chart?
Word-final variants: single letters (aleph, beth, he, yodh, kaph, lamedh, mem, nun, shin classes) that take a distinct shape at the end of a word, which is why the block gives them their own codepoints. They are historically important - positional variation is the seed of the Arabic script’s initial/medial/final letter system - and practically important for readers: recognizing a final form as “the same letter” as its base is the main eye-training exercise of the script.
What did the Nabataeans write about?
Two registers. The short one: names, lineages and blessings to gods - Dushara (the chief god), Al-lat and Manawat recur across thousands of graffiti. The long one: tomb inscriptions, especially at Hegra (Mada’in Saleh), where finely carved facades carry dated legal texts - who owns the tomb, who may be buried, curses on violators - complete with dating formulas you can decode with this chart’s number signs. Between them, the corpus sketches a caravan kingdom’s whole social surface, from a traveler’s scratched blessing to royal property law.