How it began
Dadan, in the AlUla valley of northwestern Arabia in what is now Saudi Arabia, stood on the Incense Road and emerged as a powerful capital around 2,600 years ago. Its inhabitants lived by oasis agriculture and by the trade in frankincense. According to National Geographic, Dadan developed its own writing system, based on scripts used in neighboring oases such as Tayma and Dumah and on the alphabets of southern Arabia.
How it works
Dadanitic is a variety of the Ancient North Arabian family of alphabets. It was used to write a Semitic language with a set of 28 consonant sounds similar to that of Arabic. The language of the inscriptions keeps several archaic features not seen in later Arabic. Texts were carved in stone, on rock faces and on worked blocks, in and around the oasis.
How it spread
The script served the local kings of Dadan and then the kingdom of Lihyan, whose tribe took control of the oasis around 2,500 years ago. It was in use in the oasis during the second half of the first millennium BCE. Excavations at al-Khuraybah, ancient Dadan, have recovered more than 100 inscriptions in the script, and the AlUla area as a whole has yielded nearly 2,000 inscriptions.
Where it stands today
Dadanitic, once called Lihyanite, is extinct, and its grammar is still poorly understood. Epigraphers study the inscriptions for what they show about the development of Semitic languages and about the societies of ancient northwest Arabia. Archaeological excavations at Dadan continue.
