Two More Nabataean Inscriptions from the Syro-Jordanian Ḥarrah desert

ABSTRACT

This paper publishes two short Nabataean graffiti discovered in 2015 by the team of the OCIANA project at Tell al-ʿAbd and Marabb al-Shurafāʾ, in the Ḥarrah desert, north-eastern Jordan. Despite their brevity, these new texts appear of interest because the Ḥarrah is an area well outside that in which Nabataean inscriptions are normally found, bringing to twelve the number of known texts from that region, taking the Namārah epitaph into account. Consisting exclusively of onomastica, they contain some personal names already known among the settled and nomadic communities of southern Syria and northern Jordan as well as some new anthroponyms in the Nabataean onomasticon, notably šmʿn, that may correspond to the Arab name Samʿān.

KEYWORDS:

• Nabataean inscriptions
• Nabataean onomasticon
• Jordan
• Ḥarrah desert

Acknowledgements

The authors are greatly indebted to Michael C.A. Macdonald (University of Oxford), Ahmad Al-Jallad (Ohio State University), Marijn van Putten (University of Leiden) and Chiara Della Puppa (University of Leiden) for their very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Special thanks are also due to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable input and corrections as well as to Linda Hulin (University of Oxford) for having facilitated the publication of this study. All errors remain our own.

Notes on contributors

Ali Al-Manaser is a Jordanian scholar who has completed two doctorates at the Freie Universität, Berlin. Between 2013 and 2018, he worked on the Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia at the University of Oxford, where he entered over 30,000 Safaitic inscriptions. He has organized all the Badia Epigraphic Surveys (2015, 2017, 2918 and 2019) and now has an academic advisor post at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities of Jordan. He has written extensively on the Archaeology and History of Jordan and ancient north Arabian inscriptions.

Jérôme Norris is a French scholar and PhD student. His Thesis topic is ‘Peoples and social groups in northwestern Arabia during Nabataean and Roman times’. He has written extensively on social history; ancient ethnography and ancient north Arabian inscription. His research fields are Ancient Arabia, Nabataeans, Epigraphy, Arabs Before Islam, Ancient North Arabian, Thamudic, Safaitic.

ORCID

Ali Al-Manaser http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1911-0632

Notes

1 On the Nabataean inscriptions from the Ḥawrān, see Starcky (1985, 172–81), Macdonald (2003, 44–6), Nehmé (2010a). Nehmé’s excellent article contains a very useful table (pp. 477–92) with the provenances, references, and concordance of all the inscriptions so far known, including the unpublished material.

2 Dussaud and Macler (1903, 26–7, 314–23). See the most recent treatment of the Namārah inscription in Fiema et al. (2015, 405–09).

3 The presence of the ruler’s mausoleum at this unexpected place remains, on the other hand, an open question. For a description of the monument with its correct dimensions, see Macdonald (2008, 321).

4 In contrast to Milik (1980, 41) for whom these texts come ‘sans aucun doute de la region de Qasr Burquʿ’, Macdonald (1980, 207, n. 21) regards this provenance as probable, but not certain.

5 See Norris (forthcoming), for a reinterpretation of one of these two Nabataean inscriptions as well as of eight Safaitic texts of this collection.

6 An important number of these Safaitic inscriptions were re-recorded during the 2015 survey. This was the occasion to observe that the texts actually present a distinctive pattern in their spatial distribution, certain spots of the site having only one or two texts while others show a high concentration, with several hundred specimens. The survey also permitted the note that several texts have unfortunately suffered from damage or displacement after Winnett’s visit, notably because of the building of a Bedouin grave on the hill-top, which has a modern Arabic inscription dated to 1974.

7 From what is discernible, this Safaitic text reads l {g/ʿ}rmt b ‘By {G/ʿ}rmt {son of} … ’. Both Grmt and ʿrmt are attested names in Safaitic (HIn 159, WH 1120), though the former is more common.

8 Starcky (1966, 931), Marchetti (1992, 170).

9 Healey (1993, 53–54), who refers to the previous theory exposed in Starcky (1966, 931).

10 See Porten and Yardeni (2014, xix), 11, 47, 59, 67, 68, 69, etc. The earliest of these documents were produced during the reign of Artaxerxes II (404–358 BC) and the latest during that of Ptolemy I (305–283/2 BC).

11 See, for instance, MIRP 8: npš šly br zrʿlhy ʿlym šʿydw nšʾ šwšpʾ ‘Funerary monument of Šly son of Zrʿlhy servant of Šyʿdw [son of] Nš the groomsman’; ThNUJ 32: lbnt {ʿly}mt ʾšlm gʿdw šlm ‘May Lbnt hand-maid of ʾšlm [son of] Gʿdw be safe and sound’; ThNUJ 35: ḥlyw tymʾlhy šlm ‘May Ḥlyw [son of] Tymʾlhy be safe and sound’, etc.

12 On this expression and the frequent omission of b in ktb in haplography, see Fiema et al. (2015, 402).

13 An alternative interpretation of the text could be to take it as a simple list of personal names, perhaps a genealogy of five generations: ʿwmw br ḥyrw ʿlyd ʾšʾ mšk{w} ‘ʿwmw son of Ḥyrw [son of] ʿlyd [son of] ʾšʾ [son of] Mšk{w}’. ʿlyd is indeed known as a personal name, attested twice in Sinai with the -w ending (CIS II 1092, 2730). According to the editors of the CIS, it may represent the diminutive ʿUlayd. However, since this interpretation involves the absence of the word br on three occasions, it is certainly less likely than the former.

14 (Wüthnow 1930, 29; Cantineau II, 1932, 128; Stark 1971, 105; Negev 1991, 49). Note PAES III A 7, 797¹ from Ṣūr al-Lajāʾ (Trachonitis), where Αὔμος occurs as the father’s name of a man described as strategos and camp commandant. However, the correspondence of ʿwmw/y with the Greek Aumos should remain a hypothesis. The Nabataean ʿwmw could equally represent, for instance, the Arab name ʿAwwām (CIK II, 216, 1).

15 See also the forms Ḥyry and Hyrʾ attested in Palmyrene Aramaic (Stark 1971, 88).

16 Note, however, the name ʾšw which is known from five inscriptions from the Sinai: CIS II 499, 1124, 1297, 1429, 1517; (cf. Cantineau II, 1932, 68; Negev 1991, 15).

17 Teixidor (1976, 318–19); IIH 30; Abbadi (1983, 82–82). There are two attestations of ʾs² ʾ in Safaitic (Is.Mu 450, 500), though it appears impossible to say whether this has or has not a connection with the north-west Semitic ʾš ʾ.

18 This appears to be an interesting example of use of this name by someone whom we would call an Arab. In pre-Islamic Arabia, the form Ys¹mʿʾl */Yasmaʿʾīl/ occurs quite frequently in ancient South Arabian, while the Safaitic material attests the spelling Ys¹mʿl */Yasmaʿel/ with a dropped glottal stop (HIn 971). The Iqtal form ʾs¹mʿ(ʾ)l is, on the other hand, only known from one Sabaic inscription, where it occurs as the name of a man from north-eastern Arabia settled at Maʾrib (RES 3605bis; see Robin and Prioletta 2013, 155).

19 On this local script used in parallel with the Nabataean script from Petra, see (Starcky 1966, 930–31; Starcky 1985, 169, 173; Macdonald 2003, 44–46, 54–55; Macdonald 2006, 285; Nehmé 2010a, 453).

20 On these inscriptions whose script is transitional between Nabataean and Arabic, see (Nehmé 2010b, 47–88; Avner et al. 2013, 237–40; Fiema et al. 2015, 417–21).

21 The author of MNT 2a expresses affiliation with the famous tribe of ʿmrt, and not ʿmlt as previously thought. See Nehmé’s recent re-reading of this text in Nehmé and Macdonald (in press, 72–73). MNT 2c presents an odd and unique expression, dy mn hm, which Milik interprets as ‘qui fait partie des mêmes (gens)’, certainly as a reference to the ʿmrt social group mentioned in MNT 2a and in the Safaitic texts of the same stone.

22 We are most grateful to Michael C.A. Macdonald for this information. One can add to these two references to Šmʿn,the Hatran Aramaic inscription IIH 24 that contains the name Šmʿny. This was previously read as šmʿnw and considered as a hypocoristic of *Šmʿ-Nbw (Abbadi 1983, 169). If Aggoula’s re-reading Šmʿny is correct, then one could be tempted to see a connection between this Šmʿny and Šmʿn.

23 TIJ 270; KJA 44, 49, 290; KJB 107, 148, 156, 174; KJC 351, 353, 539, 756. Note that, with the possible exceptions of KJC 351, 353 and 539, these texts seem to refer to a single person, S¹mʿn son Qn son of Ms¹kt son of S¹ʿd. See the establishment of his genealogy in King 1990, 86.

24 See Cantineau II (1932, 151), Negev (1991, 65), Hoyland (2011, 95).

25 This name is not common, but Starcky (1978b, 52) explains it as an Arabic diminutive of the fuʿayl type.

26 Cantineau II (1932, 129), Negev (1991, 50) who misspells this as ʿAʿidh.

27 For more references on this name, see Sartre (1985, 170).

28 However, it remains true that, unlike classical Arabic, the different Old Arabic dialects show some variations in the spelling of active participles of II-y/w weak roots, since certain Safaitic texts exhibit some participles with a medial glottal stop and others with a medial glide. Compare zʾm ‘dead’ with ẖyṭ ‘journeying’, cf. Al-Jallad (2015, 16, 121). Consequently, one cannot completely rule out the possibility that ʿyḏ/ʿyd(w) represents an active participle of the root √ʿwḏ with a w > y sound change, */ʿĀyeḏ/ < */ʿĀweḏ/ versus classical Arabic ʿĀʾiḏ. Nevertheless, the Greek transcriptions do not provide any evidence of this on Arabic anthroponyms of this class, the spelling of which systematically suggest the presence of a medial glottal stop. See the form Αεδος mentioned above which suggests a pronunciation */ʿĀʾeḏ/, as well as Ζαεδος */Zāʾed/, Καεμας */Qāʾem/ and Οὐαέλος */Wāʾel/ (Al-Jallad 2017b, 142, 174).

29 Although probable, this is far from secure. There is at present no clear evidence that the Nabataean ʿydw and the ancient North Arabian ʿyḏ really represent the same name. It should, indeed, be emphasised that the former could just as well correspond to a name derived from the root √ʿyd, for example ʿAyd or ʿAyād.