These are a man and woman representing the Sabaeans, a civilization that developed in the area of Yemen in southern Arabia around 790 BC and lasted until 275 AD. They were not Arabic-speakers but rather speakers of a South Semitic language related to some spoken in the modern Horn of Africa (e.g. Ethiopian Ge’ez, Tigrinya, and Amharic) as well as a handful of minority languages persisting in Yemen, Oman, and Socotra.

The Sabaean civilization may have been the “Sheba” mentioned in the Bible and was also a major cultural influence on the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum, with the Sabaean written alphabet evolving into the modern Ge’ez one. Sabaean religion appears to have been polytheistic, but some of their practices, for example pilgrimages to a religious site called the Kaaba, would make their way into Islamic sharia law.

I based both the man and woman’s appearance on a couple of ancient Sabaean sculptures. The one I used for the male figure had little, spike-like Afro “twists” and an ankle-length, dhoti-like loincloth whereas the one for the woman had a calf-length skirt and braided hair that ended in a long plait at the back. Both sculptures’ hairstyles suggested to me an African influence that would be consistent with ongoing intercourse between Africa and southern Arabia that, in all probability, would have gone back to the initial arrival of modern humans into the latter region from Africa between 70-50,000 years ago.