ABSTRACT
A group of languages known from numerous inscriptions and graffiti from South Arabia is traditionally called Epigraphic South Arabian (ESA). A. F. L. Beeston proposed to denote them as Sayhadic, ($ayhad being the name used by medieval Islamic geographers for the desert now called Ramlat al-Sab'atayn).1t was along the edge of this desert that most of the earliest attestations of these languages were found.
