Between 1000 BC and 400 AD, a larger proportion of the population of ancient west Arabia could read and write than in any other part of the ancient Near East, and possibly any other part of the ancient world. Even among the nomads there seems to have been almost universal literacy in some regions. The scores of thousands of inscriptions and graffiti they left paint a vivid picture of the way-of-life, social systems, and personal emotions of their authors, information which is not available for any other non-elite population in the ancient Near East outside Egypt.This abundance of inscriptions has enabled Michael Macdonald to explore in detail some of the - often surprising - ways in which reading and writing were used in the literate and non-literate communities of ancient Arabia. The way these communities, and the individuals within them, perceived their identities and those of others, and the problems of recognizing these perceptions at such a great distance of time, forms the second major strand in these articles.