Arab. arch. cpig. 1999: 10: 246-247 Printed m Den& All right6 rcscmcd

Copvripht 6, Munksaaard 1999

The inscription from Shenah GERALDINE KING Oxford, U.K.

The inscription (Fig. 1) from Site 1, Qatarah (West), at Shenah is pecked in a w e on the rock surface. At the beginning of the inscription is a grid shape which is un- likely to be a letter because of its size rela- tive to the other signs. It is followed by eight signs of three different shapes. The first sign, a three-armed prong with a slight tail, occurs four times. The middle bar of the first Occurrence of the sign is partially covered by a hammered dot which seems to have been inscribed later. Below the in- scription is a further example of the sign. The second sign, a central line with two arms at either end, occurs three times and the third sign, a back and two arms with a very thin and shallow middle bar, occurs once. Slightly to the left of the inscription is what appears to be a crudely hammered circle. All the signs are attested in the inscrip-

tions and painted texts found in Dhofar by

Ali Alpad M a s h al-Sh&ri and recorded by the Dhofar Epigraphic Project in 1991 and 1992. These texts have been discussed in an unpublished report (1) compiled in 1993 and some have been published in al- Shalyi (2). The direction in which the text is written and the stance of the letters is similar to that used in the inscribed and painted texts written in what I have de- scribed as Script 1. As far as I know this is the first occurrence

of the script to be recorded from northern Oman. Some of the signs which occur in the inscriptions and painted texts from Dhofar resemble the forms of letters in other preIs- lamic scripts found in the Arabian Penin- sula, Syria and Jordan. In this text, the first, fourth, sixth and seventh signs resemble the forms of h in Hismaic and Dedanite. There were 192 occurrences of the sign recorded from the Dhofar texts written in Script 1 (3), although the signs in this text have shorter tails than those found there. The second, fifth and eighth sign was recorded twenty- one times in Dhofar Script 1 (4) but no examples of this sign being used as a letter have been found in other pre-Islamic texts. The third sign is similar to the form of h in the square Safaitic script, forms of # in His- maic and some forms oft in Lihyanite. The example of the letter here is slightly unusual as the middle bar is not pecked into the rock as deeply as the arms and back of the letter. Fig. 1.

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THE INSCRIPTION FROM SHENAH

It is attested frfty-two times in the texts from Dhofar (5). These comparisons with letters in other scripts are not intended to imply that they have the same value in the Dhofar texts or in this text from Shenah. The al- phabet of the inscriptions from Dhofar has not yet been deciphered and it is not poss- ible at the moment to assign values with any certainty to the letters of the texts that have been found there or to this text from Shenah.

References 1. King GMH. The Dhofar Epigraphic Project: A De-

m p t w n ofthe lnscrapfions recorded in 1991 and 1992. 1993 unpublished.

2. al-ShM AAM. Kayf ibt iday wa-kayf irt iqav bi-1-bdarat a l - m y a h min Sabbat al-gazirat al- 'arabiyah, Tufa: kitabatuha wa-nuqushuha al- qadbnah. Dubai, 1994.

3. King The D w a r Epigraphic Ptoject: W o n 6.2.19 and Fig. 2.

4. King, The Dhofar Epigraphic Project: Section 6.2.63 and Fig. 5.

5. King, The Dhofnr Epigraphic Project: Section 6.2.20 and Fig. 2.

Ad- Geraldine King 133 Divinity Road Oxford OX4 ILW UK

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