The importance of archaeological inscriptions is due to their being one of the most important sources of Arab history in particular and ancient history in general, and the importance of antiquities lies in the fact that they contain contemporary inscriptions of ancient historical events and are not subject to distortion, so they are considered a living historical record of those ancient civilizations, those inscriptions revealed to us a lot About the established historical facts about the life of those peoples and their ancient culture.

The writing of ancient history is based on two main sources: First, historical novels of any kind, whether they come in a country, geographical, purely historical, literary, poetic or other format, which can be used in one aspect of history, whether the economic, geographical or environmental aspect. Secondly, the archaeological materials left by the ancient man in the places where he resided, visited, or passed through.

The science of inscriptions deals with the study of inscriptions written on stone or metal as well as engraved on pottery or bricks, and therefore this science does not include writings painted on pottery or wood or on papyrus scrolls. Mesopotamia and on stone in the country of the Nile Valley in the late fourth millennium BC.

Among the important non-Arab archaeological inscriptions that mentioned the Arabs, there are a group of Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions in Mesopotamia, but they provided information about the northern regions of Arabia. These inscriptions mentioned the types of trade that took place between the Arabs and the kingdoms of Mesopotamia. The Nabataean archaeological inscriptions that were found on the Greek islands were evidence of the ancient commercial activity of the Arabs reaching the Greek islands and the Aegean Sea.

There are different types of ancient archaeological inscriptions depending on the material in which they are engraved for:
Rock carvings and drawings.
Inscriptions engraved on clay.
Engraved inscriptions on metal.

Archaeological rock inscriptions and drawings: They are one of the most important sources of history, and they are images that were created on a rocky surface by grinding, scratching and drilling.
Engraving on metal: Ancient humans discovered ways of forming metals since ancient times, and copper is the oldest metal known to humans.
Al-Qubaybat is one of the types of rock artifacts, which were non-functional cup-shaped depressions found on the rocky surface resulting from a number of human strikes.

Most of the inscriptions date general events known to their contemporaries and unknown to us, such as the history of a torrential torrent, the collapse of a known dam, the accession of a king, the occurrence of a famine and the like of general matters that cannot be considered a basis for a general history, and perhaps the oldest inscriptions that appear with dates that can be known for To the date we are circulating is the Himyarite inscription that dates the year of the emergence of that kingdom, which corresponds to the year 115 BC.

Types of historical sources: Historical books: books by historians or historical writers who wrote the events of their time.
Geographical books: The ancient geographers also accurately described what they got from the ancient world, so geography books are an important historical resource.
Coins: are the ancient coins found by archaeologists.
Travel books: Travel books are among the most important sources of history, as travelers, especially Arab travelers, were keen to record all the conditions of the countries they visited.

Although most of the ancient inscriptions have been deciphered and have become of great use in the study of ancient civilizations and knowledge of their political, social, religious and economic conditions, there are still unreadable and unresolved inscriptions to this day, and the Etruscan inscriptions discovered in central Italy are still ambiguous. Although about ten thousand inscriptions were discovered, it dates back to the middle of the first millennium BC.