Twitter user @Alsarem_15 (Mamdūḥ al-Fāḍil) recently posted a Thamudic B inscription with an interesting prayer.
Safaitic Blog II
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
The verb ḫmr in Thamudic B
A Thamudic D inscription from Ranyah
Twitter user @Salhimeel has recently published a Thamudic D inscription from the region of Ranyah.
The vertical text reads:
drm ḥbb bnt nqm
Drm loves the daughter of Nqm
Amorous texts such as these are very common in the Thamudic D script type. It is impossible to date this text in precise terms, but one Thamudic D text is dated by association with a Nabataean inscription to 267 CE. It remains unclear how early Thamudic D texts can date or when the script eventually went extinct.
Wednesday, June 21, 2023
Loss of case inflection in a Paleo-Arabic inscription
The Twitter user @mashalgrad published a newly documented Paleo-Arabic text from the region of Nagrān:
Reading: حمدو بر ابو مراه
Interpretation: Ḥāmid-w son of Abū Mrʾh
Commentary: The name ḥāmid is well attested in the Arabic onomasticon; it is attested for the first time in the Paleo-Arabic corpus here with wawation. Mrʾh, however, is rare, but is attested as a male anthroponym over 30 times in the Safaitic corpus as mrʾt. In terms of orthography, it is notable that the glottal stop is spelled with the alif, indicating that the phoneme was preserved, in contrast to its loss in Old Ḥigāzī. The spelling of the glottal stop with alif has been previously attested in the Paleo-Arabic inscriptions of Ḥimà.
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The short text is impossible to date in precise terms. Paleographically, it fits between the late 5th and early 7th centuries CE. What it does demonstrate, however, is that the local dialect of Arabic in this period seems to have lost case inflection, as the word ʾabū should be inflected in the genitive as ʾabī <ʾby>. The loss of inflection in the word ʾbw has been previously observed in Nabataeo-Arabic from Northwest Arabia.
dkyr bpnw br
ʾbw ypny
'May Bpnw son of Abū Ypny be remembered' (Reading: Laïla Nehmé)
There is one caveat in the case of UJadhNab 222: the author may have been writing in Aramaic, as suggested by the use of the participle dkyr, and therefore did not inflect Arabic names in an Aramaic linguistic context, similar to how English speakers do not inflect Latin loanwords for case when writing in English. However, in the current Paleo-Arabic text, there is no reason to assume that our author was composing an Aramaic inscription; the use of the Aramaeogram <br> for 'son' continues well into the Islamic period and does not imply any sort of code switching. Thus, the inscription strongly suggests that the local dialect of Arabic had lost case inflection, in contrast to Old Ḥigāzī, as attested in the Quranic Consonantal Text, which preserves the inflection of the "five nouns." This, in turn, demonstrates that case inflection had begun to disappear in pre-Islamic Peninsular Arabic dialects as well, and not only in the Arabic of northwest Arabia (see the Petra Papryi: https://www.academia.edu/37215697/Al_Jallad_2018_The_Arabic_of_Petra), foreshadowing the linguistic situation attested in the Arabic of the Islamic conquests, as described here: https://www.academia.edu/24938389/Al_Jallad_2017_The_Arabic_of_the_Islamic_Conquests_Notes_on_Phonology_and_Morphology_based_on_the_Greek_Transcriptions_from_the_First_Islamic_Century.
Sunday, May 14, 2023
ʾns as 'people' or a time period? Remarks on GBW 2 (Al-Ghul 2021)
Professor al-Ghul has recently published an excellent treatment of four new Safaitic inscriptions from Birak al-Wisād (Jordan) in Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy: DOI: 10.1111/aae.12172.
These texts contain some new lexical items and expressions that are difficult to interpret. Here, I wish to make a few remarks on the term ʾns that occurs in GBW 2. Al-Ghul reads and translates the text as follows:
Transliteration
l ys¹lm bn ġṯ ḏ ʾl ʾty w wrd h-nhy s¹nt brḥ wrṯn h-rm w ḏkr ns¹r w ʾlhh w wrd h-ʾwl ʾns¹
Translation
"By Ys¹lm son of Ġṯ of the lineage of ʾty. And he went down to the pool, the year Wrṯn left to h-Rm. And he remembered Ns¹r and ʾlhh. And he went down to the water as the first of (all) people"
Prof. al-Ghul cautiously suggests the translation of wrd h-ʾwl ʾns¹ as 'he went down to the water as the first of people', which would be a literal translation of the words as attested previously in Safaitic. While grammatically possible, it is unclear to me what such a sentence would mean. And so I wish to suggest an alternative interpretation and translation, which may be confirmed or disqualified by the discovery of new texts.
The verb wrd 'to go down/to water' is often configured with temporal phrases, months, seasons, time periods. I would submit that ʾns¹, perhaps to be vocalized as ʾanīs, refers to a period of habitation or perhaps even larger, seasonal tribal gatherings. The use of ʾanīs to refer to the occupation of a certain site is attested, for example, in the Muʿallaqah of Labīd:
دِمَنٌ تَجَـرَّمَ بَعْدَ عَهْدِ أَنِيسِهَـا
حِجَـجٌ خَلَونَ حَلالُهَا وَحَرامُهَا
"traces (of a site) abandoned after its time of habitation
entire years desolate, both sacred and profane months"
I would therefore suggest re-parsing the clause as: wrd-h ʾwl ʾns¹ 'he went down to it (i.e. the pool, mentioned earlier in the text) at the beginning of the period of ʾns¹', where this period refers to the time when tribes gather together and settle around bodies of water. Now, there are some indications that ʾns could be understood as a time period in the published corpus of inscriptions. Let's see:
WH 3730
w ẓlm f h rḍy wqyt m-bʾs¹ ʾns¹ w ġnmt m- s²nʾ
'he suffered oppression so O Roḍay protect from the affliction of ʾns and let him have spoil from enemies'
In this case, the understanding of ʾns is ambiguous. It could be taken as a time period, perhaps a dry season in light of GWB 2, or simply the generic noun 'man'.
ASFF 229
rʿy h-ʾnḫl b-qmr h-ʾns¹y
'he pastured the valleys during the moon/month of ʾns¹y'
I have previously suggested¹ that ʾns¹y should be perhaps understood as Virgo and/or the month corresponding to it. Incidentally, this would be a period in the summer where tribes would have to gather at places of water.
References
ASFF = Inscriptions gathered by S. Abbadi and published on OCIANA.
WH = Winnett, F.V. & Harding, G.L. Inscriptions from Fifty Safaitic Cairns. (Near and Middle East Series, 9). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978.
¹Al-Jallad, A. 2016. Ancient Arabian Zodiac II. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 27: 84 – 106, pg. 95.
Is a cognate of Classical Arabic "ǧanaza" attested in Hismaic?
Sadaqah et al. have recently published a new collection of Hismaic inscriptions from Wadi Umm Ṭulayḥa, Jordan in the Jordan Journal For History and Archaeology Volume 51, No. 3, 2021. In the longest text of this panel, the editors identified a verb gnz, which they translate as 'to collect/gather up', viewing it as a loan from Gəʿəz and South Arabian. The following is a photograph of the inscription from the original article and their reading.
śr: The original reading was produced by mistaking stray marks for letters. A small bit of damage before the name was taken as a n, and a stray marking intersecting with the straight line ś caused its confusion with s. The name śr 'evil' is also well attested in Ancient North Arabian. It is possible that the name could be read as śb, but in general the b is less compact in the present author's hand.
A pre-Islamic Arabian graffito in a crypt in Rome?
In a recent article entitled Un problematico graffito nella cripta onoriana dei ss. Marcellino e Pietro, Professor A.E. Felle published a two line graffito from a 7th c. Christian martyrial sanctuary in a Roman catacomb in a curious script resembling Ancient South Arabian or Ancient North Arabian.
Prof. M. Arbach, a leading expert in the epigraphy of Ancient South Arabia, and Prof. E. Peuch, a distinguished specialist of Northwest Semitic epigraphy, provided very preliminary readings of these difficult texts assuming they are inscribed in an Arabian script, given below.
Reading of Professor Arbach
Before attempting a reading of such an inscription, one must isolate the script type. This is extremely difficult, given the provenance and the very late date. As far as we know, no North Arabian alphabets continued to be in use this late, but the Ancient South Arabian script survives well into the Islamic period. However, as both authors recognize, the letter shapes do not correspond with that alphabet; rather, if we assume a South Semitic identification, then they would appear to be a very poorly carved Ancient North Arabian variety. And herein lies the danger. There is so much variation within the Ancient North Arabian script types that, with the entire letter repertoire at our free disposal, one risks being able to read even natural damage on a rock as an inscription. Before venturing down that path of speculation, I would like to make a suggestion on the relationship between the two lines of text. Both editors read these as containing different content, taking what I think was damage as deliberate carvings. Rather, it seems to me that both lines contain the same text. Let me explain. The areas traced in red appear to be damage or etchings not associated with the original texts. On the first line, what was read as an r in fact extends through the diamond-shaped letter to its right; the tracing suggests that the half circle is distinct from the damage, but they appear connected to me. On the second line, the first letter (reading left to right) appears to be a diamond with wings, resembling a Greek Alpha. But I think it is simply the same shape as the first letter (reading right to left) on the first line, the diamond. The penultimate letter on the second line, the bow, is in fact carved much more deeply and is thicker and spaced much more closely to the adjacent letter. I wonder if this was perhaps a pre-existing symbol on the rock or a later addition. Once we remove these irregularities, we end up with the same text, written twice.
The verb ḫmr in Thamudic B
Twitter user @Alsarem_15 (Mamdūḥ al-Fāḍil) recently posted a Thamudic B inscription with an interesting prayer. source The short text reads...
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Twitter user @Alsarem_15 (Mamdūḥ al-Fāḍil) recently posted a Thamudic B inscription with an interesting prayer. source The short text reads...
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The Twitter user @mashalgrad published a newly documented Paleo-Arabic text from the region of Nagrān: Source Reading: حمدو بر ابو مراه In...
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Twitter user @Salhimeel has recently published a Thamudic D inscription from the region of Ranyah . Source The vertical text reads: drm ḥbb...