A.F.L. Beeston at the Arabian Seminar and other papers || Sayhadic Divine Designations

Sayhadic Divine DesignationsAuthor(s): A.F.L. BeestonSource: Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, , A.F.L. Beeston at the ArabianSeminar and other papers (2005), pp. 169-173Published by: ArchaeopressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41223869 .

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Edited version of a paper first published in Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 21 (1991): 1-5

Sayhadic Divine Designations

The polytheistic Sayhadic inscriptions down to the beginning of the fourth century AD employ five modes of designating divine beings: I. A "common" noun which does no more than assign the being to a category of deities. II. An individual name (ND) for a particular deity. III. An "epithet" attached to a ND. IV. An expression in the form bcl~bclt X, functioning either like an epithet, or standing independently

likeaND. V. An expression in the form d- ~ dt X, which again may function either epithet-wise or as a ND.

Mode I This is a generic designation, characterised by the potentiality of taking the marks of definition or indefinition; of being used in the dual or plural; and of having a genitival term, pronoun or noun, referring to the worshipper ("his ~ their god" etc.). The most general of these terms is the old Semitic word, appli- cable to a deity of any kind, mase. Dl(h), pl. °l°lty fern. °l(h)t pl. Hht. This can be qualified by a pronominal suffix, or by the name of a folk, e.g. HWrnr "god of the Amir folk" (cf. "God of Israel").

s2ym appears normally to designate one of the foremost deities of the various Sayhadic "nations", and is usually prefixed to the ND ("their s2ym ND"). The conventional rendering for this is "patron-deity".1

mndh ~ mdh, pl. mndht, is a deity specially associated with a byt ("family" or "village"); the conventional rendering "irrigation deity" rests on a somewhat thin etymology connecting it with Ar. nadaha "sprinkle".2 These deities are for the most part anonymous, but there are one or two instances of the ND being added, e.g. CIAS I 95.11/o2 n[s2bt/w]czyn/mn[dhw/]hrb "Nashibat and cUzzayan, the two mndh of Harib".

s2ms1, the literal meaning "sun" being also attested, is a decidedly puzzling term, at least to modern feelings, with its pl. :>s2msI. On the basis of the phrases s2ms1/mlkn "the king's s2msJ" (Ja 761/4), and [...^ms^^bwhmw "their ancestors' s2msJ " (CIH 332/73) one might guess that they were tutelary deities of a lineage, as distinct from a village or village community; note the expression 3s2msJhmw/wmndht/ [2] Dbythmw "their ̂/w^-deities and the /w«(/A-deities of their houses" (CIH 40/5). These deities remain in some cases anonymous (like the mndht); but they are sometimes given their own ND - the dedications in the Micsäl inscriptions speak of "his s2ms], cAliyyat {clyty' and the king's deity in CIH 761 {supra) is named Tanüf, 7w/(both terms mean "Lofty, Exalted").

rbc is also puzzling, the more so since the attestations are sparse; I have never felt fully convinced of the conventional acceptation as a "deity of the quarter-moon" in spite of the collocation "and their rbc and their s2msJ " (CIH 398/20), and in spite of the Qatabanian invocations in RES 3688, 3689, 3691, 3692 by S2ms] and Rbcls2hr* In Sabaic Fa 119 the dedication is to RbcnlYhcn, and the terminal invocation is by "Rbcn Yhcn and the s2ms* of their seigneurs (отг°у' But as is the case with s2msJ, I feel that the original, literal sense of the term must have been to some extent disregarded in everyday usage as a term for divinity.

mr° "seigneur", as applied to a deity, is borrowed from the terminology of human social relationships, where any relationship between superior and inferior is expressed in the complementary antithesis of mr° : cbd: the worshipper is the cbd of the deity, and the deity is "his mr3". This term of personal relationships differs in the Sayhadic culture from the term bcl which denotes the "owner" of property;5 1 cannot recall any instance of a worshipper calling a deity "his bcl" (on this see infra Mode IV).

169



170 A.F.L. Beeston

Mode II I do not wish here to discuss the very complicated problems associated with the reasons for the naming of the individual deities; I merely observe that cAthtar cttr had a cult practised universally throughout the culture area, and in lists of deities his name comes first, from which one may reasonably conclude that he was the Zeus of the Sayhadic pantheon. The "national" deities of Macin, Saba, Qataban and Hadramawt were respectively wd, Dlmqh, cm, and s*yn. The "personalities" of a host of other deities are decidedly obscure. Mode ///The divine epithets appear mostly to describe some quality of the deity. °lmqh is characterised as thwn, commonly understood to mean "utterer (of oracles)", though on somewhat uncertain etymological grounds. The patron deity of Sumcay, Plb, wasyrhm, probably, to my mind, "Merciful".6 The Qatabanian patron deity cAmm (cm) was rycn/ws3hrm, but as I have remarked elsewhere,7 the idea that this phrase means "waxing and revolving (of the moon)" seems to me extremely far-fetched. Now that Garbini8 has shown good reason for not identifying Sabaean Hrnqh as exclusively a moon god, there is no reason to suppose that the Qatabanian deity must have been so as well; and the noun s3hr is attested in Sayhadic only in the sense of "protective amulet". Unless one starts from the preconception that cAmm was necessarily a moon god, the epithets are far more readily understood by comparison with Arabic rayyďa "give increase, profit", and the second term as "protecting". As for the most common of the epithets of TaDlab, namely Rym, I have been inclined to envisage it as derived from Semitic mm "be lofty", and to think that Islamic usage, in which it is the name of the [31 mountain where this god's principal shrine stood, is a late transference. If, however, the term was originally the name of the mountain, then we must not think of the expression as meaning "TaDlab of Riyam", which is always expressed by Mode V; we would have rather to agree with Robin,9 and take it that there were two deities originally, one TaDlab and the other a montagne divinisée, and that the two have fused in the manner of Sarapis from Osiris- Apis (see also infra on °lmqh .. twr/bclm). Mode /Kin a very large range of instances, the term following bcl can be recognised as a toponym, either by explicit qualification as mhrmn "sanctuary", or by evidence from elsewhere showing that a toponym is in question. This form therefore designates the deity as "owner" of his or her sanctuary. It is possible too that in certain instances the ownership may have extended over a larger area than the sanctuary itself.10

However, there is one strange expression in which bcl occurs, and which needs some comment. The Sabaean deity °lmqh is coordinated with Twr/bclm and the two designated as bcly/Dwm/whrwm jointly, "the two owners of Awä and Hrwm" in CIH 155/5; but in a majority of instances the two expressions are placed in apposition as a single figure, as in RES 3929/6-7, Dlmqhthwn[twr]bclmbcl[h]r[wn], explicable on the "conflation" hypothesis of Robin. The bull, twr, is very commonly a symbol of strength and fecun- dation, and the innumerable bucrania used as decorative motifs suggest religious associations; there is lit- tle difficulty in understanding twr as metaphorically equivalent to "deity" (see above, Mode I). In this con- text the following word bclm has generally been understood as equivalent to the Arabic expression °ard bďl "land watered by rain (without artificial irrigation)".11 This affords a neat parallel with the designation of S1mc as twr/°bdcm in Ry 394, since bdc is territory immediately adjacent to a settlement, which one would normally expect to be an area of agricultural exploitation depending on artificial irrigation.

In the case of the designation of °lmqh as bcl/Dwcln (CIH 579/3, RES 4191/5) or bcl/°wcl/srwh (CIH 397/4 etc.), the current trend is towards taking °wcl in the sense of "ibexes" though some older writers, such as Glaser, had opted for another sense of the Arabic °awcãU namely "mountainous regions", i.e. the haunts of ibexes; and I am inclined to feel that the qualification "of Sirwãh" makes the latter more prob- able (it does not affect the thesis that there was a close association between divinities and the ibexes that were the quarry of the ritual hunt). At all events, the two alternatives should best be left open, "ibexes" or "ibex(-haunts)".12 Mode V Before starting this section, it may be well to explain why I have not included, in it or alongside it, reference to a form ND b-X: namely, that in the many cases where we find "dedicated to ND at X", the



Sayhadic Divine Designations 171

preposition being sometimes b- and sometimes cd(y), I would hold that the correct syntactic analysis is to make the prepositional phrase dependent on the verb, and not a qualificative of the ND. Direct qualification of a noun by a prepositional phrase, frequent in European languages, is [4] rather alien to Semitic. One will recall Genesis 1.7 hammayim °ašer mittahat laraqíď "the waters which are below the firmament" (as against the New English Bible version "the water under the vault"); and in Sayhadic we find a similar instance in Sharcabï-Sawa 1 olhřmrm/dbbrhtn "the god of Amir, who is vXBrhtn".

There is no doubt that in a large number of cases, d- ~ dt as a qualificative of a divinity introduces a toponym, usually the name of a sanctuary where the god dwells. Thus in the case of the Hadramite deity sJyn d-°lm we have evidence in RES 3691/2 "dedicated to S'yn at His sanctuary °lm" (b-mhrms^lm) that °lm is a toponym. But there are other instances where it has been generally recognised that the term following d- designates a quality or abstract attribute; the controversy lies in the identification of the quality described. The Nielsenian notion that every goddess must necessarily be a manifestation of the sun has led to the very frequent acceptance of an identification of the pair dt/hmym and dt/bcdn(m) (often occurring together) as designations of the "hot" (root H-M-M) summer sun and the "remote" winter sun respectively. This appears to me extremely improbable, seeing that we are dealing with an area only about 15° away from the Equator, where such a seasonal difference is far less marked than in northern European latitudes. The British Admiralty Handbook Western Arabia and the Red Sea (Great Britain. Naval Intelligence Divi- sion 1946: 167) remarks: "A peculiarity of the seasonal course of temperature at Sancä is the small range between the mean of the coldest month and that of June, the warmest, ... a difference of only nine degrees Fahrenheit [5° Celsius]". I prefer to revert to the explanation advanced long ago by W. Fell (1900: 250), that hmym is to be related to the root H-M-Y "protection". Astronomically, it is the summer sun which rises higher above the horizon and, so far as that goes, would better deserve to be called "remote"; but I would hold that bcdn does not refer to astronomical facts, but to divine "transcendence", as so vividly expressed in Isaiah 55.9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts". The corresponding Qatabanian pair dt/sntn and dt/zhrn expresses the same ideas in different words: the former attributable to root S-W-N "protect" and the latter with the concept of "splendour, power".

Where the X term after d- does denote a sanctuary, it might be pertinent to enquire what difference (if any!) there was between that and Mode IV with bcl; but to such a query there is at present no answer possible. One could perhaps speculate about a possible differentiation between "residential" rights in a shrine, expressed by d-, and "proprietorial" rights expressed by bcl, but evidence is lacking on such a point.

There are no securely attested cases of a divine attribute being expressed by the nisba form -y. Hence one must regard with the greatest suspicion the interpretation of Minaic RES 3695/5 qnyh/wd /hwlny/frbrtfmn as "possession de Wadd hawlanite à cause d'eux deux"; the text is very fragmentary and its syntax cannot be discerned. Since -ny is the characteristic Minaic absolute dual termination,13 the word might well be simply the dual of a noun hwl, and not syntactically attached to the ND at all. [5]

Notes 1 In a few cases s2ym appears placed after the ND: Sabaic cttrs2ymm (CIH 36/2, CIH 398/20), Qatabanic

Dnby/s2ymn (RES 2701/5 etc.), as if it were an epithet (Mode III). The dialectal difference between the two forms is of no more significance than that in English between "John, the coachman" and a common nineteenth-century form "John Coachman". In CIH 570/7 the mndhf/Jmwn/wmDkly/tmrm are boundary marks between two palmgroves, and surely not deities; the exact senses of the two terms mndh and nfkl here are extremely obscure. The second has been (speculatively) rendered "barns (for crops)".



172 A.F.L. Beeston

3 The editor restores the plural [D]s2ms1, without any clear justification. No Sayhadic vox propria for "moon" is attested; the Common Semitic term wrh is in Sayhadic "month", s2hr has one Sabaean attestation in the sense "first day of month". A Sayhadic deity is never bcl of human beings; the only application of the word in relationships involv- ing humans is to a "husband".

6 The root rhm appears only in the Sabaic inscriptions of the latest, monotheistic period, and there it is certainly a loanword from the north; rhm is probably the genuine Old South Arabian form of the root. Jamme (1947: 134) renders it as "doux".

7 Beeston 1988: 160. 8 Garbini 1973-1974. y Robin 1981: 273.

In Na 20/4 Plb is bc 1/hzyyhn/dqdm/hgrn/zrbm "lord of H which is in front of the town Z", and the editor notes that Yäqüt has recorded Нщаууап as a market area containing sown ground and cropland; there is no cogent reason for supposing it to be the name of a sanctuary. If there are any instances where the term following bcl can be identified as a tribal name, the reference is probably rather to the tribal territory than to the members of the tribe (see note 5); but caution is needed - it would be risky to assume an identity between (bcl/)bklnn (CIH 399/4) and the tribe Bakïl, which always appears as Bklm.

11 There is nevertheless a certain problem here. In Gl 1520/5 the phrase mhn/yfdwfifrl/dbrdm/bfriwtn is rendered by the editors "was immer erworben wird an bacl-Ländereien der (Sippe) duBRDM an diesem Kanal"; the fnwt is a secondary canal leading offa main channel, for the irrigation of a plot of land, and it sounds incongruous to speak about "unirrigated land on Úňsftiwť. Could not the syntax be other- wise, with bcl in the sense of (human) proprietors, namely "was immer erwerben werden die Grundbe- sitzer des (Landes) d-BRDm an diesem Kanal"? In that case, the following clause fwjl/yfdw^mdm would have the landlords as subject also of yfdw, and ocmd could be understood either as "(other) irri- gated plots (i.e. than those on this particular fnwt)", or else in the other sense, proposed by J. Ryckmans, "vine supports". 12 CIH 457/1 8 has s2msIyhmw/bclty/Dwtnm (perhaps to be restored also in Na 33/2, Na 49/2), but it is prob- lematic how to understand Dwtn here; were they "boundaries" or "boundary marks"? and what can be the significance of saying that a deity is bclt of them?

13 As already recognised in Höfner 1943: 124; Beeston 1984: § M 14:6.

Sigla

CIAS I Inscription in Pirenne & Beeston 1977. CIH Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. Pars IV. Inscriptiones himyariticas et sabaeas

continens. Paris: Reipublicae Typographeo, 1889-1932. Fa 1 19 Inscription in Ryckmans G 1952. GÌ 1 520 Inscription in Höfner & Sola Solé 1 96 1 . Ja 761 Inscription in Jamme 1962. Na Inscriptions in Nami 1943.

X

RES Répertoire ďépigraphie sémitique. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1900-1968. Shai^abi-Sawã 1 Inscription in Robin 1994. Ry 394 Inscription in Ryckmans G 1949.



Say hadic Divine Designations 173

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Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 54: 231-259. uarbini u.

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Pirenne J. & Beeston A.F.L. 1977. Corpus des Inscriptions et Antiquités Sud-arabes. Tome 1, Section 1. Louvain: Peeters.

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Hudhud. Festschrift Maria Höfher zum 80. Geburtstag. Graz: Karl-Franzens-Universität. 1994. Kulyab Yuha3min est-il le XoXaißoc du Périple de la mer Erythrée? Raydãn 6: 91-99.

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A.F.L. Beeston at the Arabian Seminar and other papers || Sayhadic Divine Designations