The inscription Jaussen-Savignac [Lihyanite] 71Author(s): A.F.L. Beeston, F.V. Winnett, M.A. al-Ghul and J. RyckmansSource: Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, , A.F.L. Beeston at the ArabianSeminar and other papers (2005), pp. 107-110Published by: ArchaeopressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41223856 .

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Edited version of a paper first published in Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 3 (1973): 69-72

The inscription Jaussen-Savignac [Lihyanite] 71

A.F.L. Beeston, F. V. Winnett, M.A. al-Ghul & J. Ryckmans

The discussion on this text consisted of a paper given by Professor A.F.L. Beeston, some comments communicated in writing from Professor F.V. Winnett, and interpellations by Professors Jacques Ryckmans and Mahmud al-Ghul.

The following is a summary of BEESTON's paper.

The text is found at al-Khureiba and is manifestly in Lihyanite script. It was included (under no. 91) in W. Caskel's Libyan und Lihyanisch (1954), but his interpretation is far from satisfactory. My study of it has led me to the conclusion that the language is not Lihyanite dialect, but near-classical Arabic: it should therefore be classed not in the Lihyanite corpus, but along with the Nemara tombstone of king Imru3 al- Qays. The readings cause little difficulty except at the end of line 5, where we find the form TA This has always hitherto been read as two letters (though there is much divergence over the identification of the letters), but I am inclined to suggest tentatively that it is the single letter d: in normal cursive Lihyanite script this has two separate strokes, 0.

I incline also to think that it is a funerary inscription, and that the name occupying lines 1-3 is that of the dead man. The rest of the text seems to me to read very simply in Arabic. A few notes suffice, š iff is recorded in the classical Arabic léxica as a synonym of rib h "financial gain"; and although sahha "be abundant" is recorded only in connection with water, the extension of a "moisture" term into the field of "wealth" is ubiquitously attested in Arabic. Safa is recorded by Yäqüt as a toponym in the neighbourhood of Medina, and that it may have formerly been a tribal name seems not improbable. Hifãra is the technical Arabic term for the function of acting as bedouin guard of a caravan (see e.g. Harïrîs maqãma 12). Caskel has made a mistake in interpreting li-talãti sinïn as "für drei Jahren": the expression is the regular early Arabic mode of saying "in the third year". This part of the text reads: (4) skšfh >mr (5) blhgr.ws<d> (6) snt.mn "dy.s {1)fy.fhfr. (8) hlmfl.d (9) //// (10) snn. In classical Arabic, this could be read as sahha šiffuhu, °amara bi l-higri wa-sadda sanatan min °adã Safa fa-hafara (bi) ha-1-mafãlí (bďda-ha) li t alati sinïn: "his gains were abundant; he was amir in al- [70] Hijr and stood out for a year against the aggression of Safa, and subsequently acted as caravan guard in these desert areas in the third year (thereafter, i.e. the next but one, according to the normal Near Eastern method of inclusive reckoning)".

As to the name, Caskel's analysis of tnyl as tinn-°il is most improbable. Tinn occurs nowhere else in composita, and the rendering "friend of god" (suggesting a parallel with the Muslim Halli Allah) is mis- leading; Arabic tinn does not mean simply a "friend", but an "equal (in age or status)", which is unthink- able in this connection. Better tunayyil "she bestows" (alluding to the goddess Alilat). Equally unaccept- able is Caskel's analysis of the clan or group name as Häni3-hunkat. We have here the Lihyanite article hn (used in that form before pharyngals like э), plus the plural of Arabic hanik "expert". The use of the Lihy- anite article, in contrast with the Arabic article / elsewhere in the text, might suggest that this is a designa-

107

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108 A.F.L. Beeston, F.V. Winnett, M.A. al-Ghul & J. Ryckmans

tion applied to the dead man's community by the Lihyanite sedentaries, rather than a self-appellation; on the other hand, the mention of two people belonging to a group called °lřhnkt in the South Arabian text CIH 450 indicates, if there is any identity between these and the group in the Lihyanite area, that it was a fairly widespread name and not merely a specifically Lihyanite use. At all events, it seems to me that the group were North Arabian bedouin, with perhaps offshoots in South Arabia, whose expertise consisted in knowledge of the desert; and that they were hired - and well paid - by the Lihyanite sedentaries to pro- tect the latter's settlements and caravans. The linking of the title amir to a specifically described year sug- gests that it was not a permanent status but a temporarily assigned function (as is the case with the Muslim °amïr al-hajj).

5JÇ 0$ 5|> P|» 5JÇ

Salient points in WINNETT'S communication are:

1. A puzzling feature of the inscription is that several letters appear in quite different forms. Savignac comments that the letters are carelessly traced and offer an interesting mixture of Minaean [sic] and Lihy- anite signs. But the stiff, angular characters that he calls Minaean are really monumental Lihyanite, their Lihyanite nature being attested by the tendency of the upright lines to converge. What we are really faced with is a mixture of monumental and cursive Lihyanite signs, not, so far as I have observed, to be found in any other Lihyanite inscription; the letters of lines 1-3, together with the first letter of line 4, are monu- mental, the rest of the text cursive.

A clue to an understanding of this is to be found, I believe, in some of the Safaitic inscriptions. There, the author occasionally writes his name and genealogy in large letters but employs a smaller, though iden- tical, script for the rest of the inscription (see e.g. WH 190 and 648). That is, the author's name and gene- alogy are given special treatment and prominence. The same effect is achieved in JSLih 71 not by employ- ing a larger script, but by using the more elegant monumental signs. [71]

The presence of monumental script and cursive side by side shows that the two scripts were in use si- multaneously, although it is evident from the way in which the name of the grandfather is written in line 2 that a knowledge of the monumental script was declining, since the monumental form of š is not used.

[BEESTON:This remark is based on Winnett's reading of the name as tš%;9 but for my part, I regard the reading tnyl as virtually certain].

The fact that a cursive script was in use at Dedan is a matter of considerable interest since it presup- poses the existence of documents on some such material as parchment; a script employed exclusively for writing on rock would never develop cursive forms.

[BEESTON: This observation, if regarded as valid, has far-reaching implications; for the so-called "Tha- mudic" graffiti are undoubtedly in a "cursive" script]. 2. The occurrence of expression d°l in line 3 led Caskel to conclude that the man named came from the Tabük region, on the ground that this form occurs only in that area and in Eastern Arabia. This is not quite accurate, for the form occurs in another inscription at Dedan (JSLih 226, of which the script is a mixture of Minaean and Lihyanite), in "Thamudic" inscriptions at MadäDin Sälih (Dghty 16/3), Jabal Mismac (Dghty 50/4, HU 260, 262 = Eut 307), south of Teima (JSTham 596), in the НаэИ region (HU 195 = Eut 235), and in the Sakäka district (WR 1 1, 18). All these inscriptions are of relatively late date, being written in the Hijazi or Tabuki forms of Thamudic script. In Safaitic, d°l is particularly common (no less than 62 tines in the 1009 texts published in my "Safaitic Inscriptions from Jordan" [Winnett 1957]). Thus the dis- tribution is such as to allow the person mentioned in JSLih 71 to have come from many other places than Tabük.

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The Inscription Jaussen-Savignac [Lihyanite] 71 109

3. The people referred to as Ahnikat seems to be that mentioned in the South Arabian CIH 450. It will be observed that in line 2 ofthat inscription there are two D/, and in line 5 three, preceding °hnkt. One of them in line 5 is probably the result of dittography; but the second in each case seems to be the equivalent of hn- in JSLih 71. One is surprised to find the North Arabian article in this South Arabian context.

[BEESTONrMy own very tentative analysis of the forms in CIH 450 had been that d°l incorporates a de- monstrative (comparable with Arabic °ulã, hence d°l = "of those who are"), and that the second °l was to be read as °ãl and not the article. In the rest of JSLih 71 the article is spelt simply 7, with no Dalif, and the orthographic practice of the Nemara inscription seems to fluctuate somewhat in this respect; though this is a point that needs further study]. [72] 4. The absence of a lãm auctoris at the beginning of the inscription supports Beeston's belief that it is memorial or funerary in character and was set up after cAnazahfs death. This makes me wonder whether sh should not be explained from sãha "flow, melt, dissolve", and the clause be rendered "his gains have melted away".

GHUL commented: 1. The absence of a co-ordinating conjunction after sh šfli suggests that this clause is not part of the his- torical narrative that follows, but that it might be taken as an optative formula, "may his reward be great." [BEESTON: it we accept both this view, and my own interpretation of the text as funerary, we must inevi- tably conclude that these people already had a concept of a future life of rewards and punishment. Unfor- tunately, neither view can be yet regarded as absolutely established]. 2. ° amar a in the sense "he was an amir" is not attested in classical Arabic, and it would be better to read the word as the well-attested °ummira "he was appointed amir." RYCKMANS commented: 1 . The recognition of this text as so closely similar in language to classical Arabic entails acceptance of the "low" chronology for the Lihyani inscriptions. 2. In addition to CIH 450, there are other South Arabian texts mentioning people called °hnk, with singu- lar hnky, hnkyt (CIH 532, 534, 716, RES 3957, 4133). It should be considered whether these also could allude to the Ahnikat discussed hitherto.

[The point had in fact been already made by Winnett, though only with the comment "Whether there is any connection between them I must leave to specialists in South Arabian to determine"].

Sigla

CIH Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. Pars IV. Inscriptiones himyariticas et sabaeas continens. Paris: Reipublicae Typographeo, 1889-1932.

Dghty "Thamudic" inscriptions copied by Charles Doughty and renumbered in van den Branden 1950.

Eut "Thamudic" inscriptions copied by Julius Euting and published in van den Branden 1950. HU "Thamudic" inscriptions copied by Charles Huber and renumbered in van den Branden 1950. JSLih Lihyanite inscriptions published in Jaussen & Savignac 1909-1922. JSTham "Thamudic" inscriptions published in Jaussen & Savignac 1909-1922.

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1 10 A.F.L. Beeston, F.V. Winnett, M.A. al-Ghul & J. Ryckmans

RES Répertoire ďépigraphie sémitique. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1900-1968. WH Safaitic inscriptions published in Winnett & Reed 1978. WR "Thamudic" inscriptions published in Winnett & Reed 1970.

References

Caskel W. 1954. Libyan und Lihyanisch. (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-

Westfalen, Geisteswissenschaften, 4). Köln: Westdeutscher Verlag. Jaussen A. & Savignac M-R.

1909-1922. Mission archéologique en Arabie. (5 volumes). Paris: Leroux/Geuthner. Van den Branden A

1950. Les inscriptions thamoudéennes. (Bibliothèque du Muséon, 25). Louvain: Institut Orien- taliste de l'Université de Louvain.

Winnett F.V. 1957. Safaitic Inscriptions from Jordan. (Near and Middle East Series, 2). Toronto: University

of Toronto Press. Winnett F.V. & Harding G.L.

1978. Inscriptions from Fifty Safaitic Cairns. (Near and Middle East Series, 9). Toronto: Uni- versity of Toronto Press.

Winnett F.V. & Reed W.L. 1970. Ancient Records from North Arabia. (Near and Middle East Series, 6). Toronto: Univer-

sity of Toronto Press.

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