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.

If correct, then the verb could provide important evidence for linguistic contact between Safaitic and southern Semitic languages at some point in its pre-history. But a closer inspection of the photograph shows that gnz is a phantom. The medial letter, which is a straight line, may hold the value of n in Safaitic but in Hismaic, and in this particular hand, the n is a simple dot. 

Image 2: The alleged gnz

Image 3: The word bn, where the n is a dot

Rather, the straight line in Hismaic has the value of ś, that is s² = ش.  The word the editors took as gnz is in fact gśz. Now, gśz is clearly not a word, but we need not commit ourselves to the way the editors parsed the phrase. Hismaic does not employ any markers of word boundaries - these must be inferred by the reader. I would suggest that the g and ś should be read together as a single word, and then the remaining letters would form the final word of the inscription. These correctly read produce zmlt, contra the reading of the original edition, namely, mbnt. What the original editors took as a b is clearly a l once compared with the other l's of the inscription. What caused the editors to take it as a b is a stray line intersecting with the bottom end of the letter, perhaps an over-extension while carving, a slip of the blade, so to speak. The mark they took as an n appears to be a stray bit of damage, part of the same damage pattern that affects the shaft of the l as well. 

Image 4: zmlt

Image 5: ʾl

Now, the name zmlt has been previously attested in Hismaic (AMJ 143). The dating component of this text would therefore be snt gś zmlt 'the year of the troop of Zmlt', perhaps referring to when an individual or group called zmlt went to war. Similar modes of dating are attested in Safaitic, usually using ḥrb 'war' rather than a reference to the troop itself. 

There are a few other places where I would suggest a different reading than the original editors. I give my reading of the text below. With the exception of the dating formula and the corrected readings of the names, I follow the interpretation of the original editors. 

l ḏky bn śr ḏ ʾl ʾbt w dṯʾ snt gś zmlt

'By ḏky son of śr of the lineage of ʾbt and he spent the season of the later rains (here) the year of the troop of Zmlt'

ḏky: The name the editors suggested ḏġny is unattested and does not seem to come from a known root. What they read as ġ is more likely a k. They also took a stray mark as a n. The name ḏky 'clever' is well attested in Ancient North Arabian and has previously appeared in Hismaic, e.g. KJC 179. 

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.

ʾbt: The name of the lineage group is likely ʾbt rather than ʾġt. There is some damage on the stone that motivated the latter reading, but looking at it closely the original letter seems to be a bow. If indeed this damage is part of the letter - it is impossible to be certain from the published photographs, then it would produce the name ʾkt. Both of these names are previously attested. 

To conclude, this short, seasonal text does not offer us any lexical connection with South Arabia or Ethiopic. Rather, it is in line with the type of dating formulae employed mainly in Safaitic, where years could be known by major events they witnessed. In this case, the formation of a troop perhaps under the command of a man called Zmlt was a remarkable enough to use to date one's text.

Bibliography:

Sadaqah, I.S., Tarawneh, M.B., Abudanah, F. 2021. "A Sort of Sepulchral Construction in Wadi Umm Ṭulayḥa, Southeastern Badia, Jordan?"  Jordan Journal For History and Archaeology Volume 51, No. 3: 97-109.

AJC, KJC = King, G.M.H. 1990. Early North Arabian Thamudic E. A preliminary description based on a new corpus of inscriptions from the Ḥismā desert of southern Jordan and published material. Ph.D thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.