ASFF 271

OCIANA 1: w ṣyr m- tʾġl s¹nt dṯʾ ḫzn ʾgm f h lt s¹lm, trans. and he returned to permanent water from Tʾġl the year Ḫzn spent the season of the later rains at ʾgm. 

The present inscription poses some interpretive difficulties on account of its unique wording, but the concepts are well within the range of formulaic expression. The author seems to be describing how adverse seasonal conditions have forced him to return to permanent water during the season of the later rains. This sentiment is well represented in the corpus, but it is the first time where this phenonemon seems to be attributed to ʾgm 'stars'. 

ṣyr mtʾfl: The verb ṣyr 'to return to water' is well attested and understood. What follows appears to be a circumstantial participle of the verb tʾfl, with the m-preformative. In Classical Arabic, the expression ʾafala ʿani l-balad when applied to humans signifies one's departure from a town or country (Lane, 70), but it is normally applied to celestial objects to signify their setting. Since one's permanent town or country makes little sense in a nomadic context, perhaps tʾfl refers to (solitary) movement away from one's tribe/social group. If this is the case, then its sense would correspond well to the common verb wḥd 'to be alone.'

dṯʾ ḫzn ʾgm: OCIANA 1 took this, faute de mieux, as a VSO sentence '(the year) Ḫzn spent the season of the later rains at ʾgm'. While ḫzn is indeed a common personal name, ʾgm is extremely rare. It is, moreover, not attested as a toponym anywhere else. Since years are often dated by major events, which can include the movements of people, it would be a happier explanation if we could find a group by this name. Rather, it is possible to take ḫzn as an adjective, 'withheld', 'concealed' (Lane, 734), in construct with ʾgm, the plural of the noun ngm 'stars' (see Al-Jallad 2020c). The first word, ḏṯʾ, would be a proper noun, 'the season of the later rains,' producing the following reconstruction: sanata deṯāʾ ḫazīn ʾaggom 'the year of the later rains that were withheld by stars.' Adjectives and participles very commonly form asyndetic relative clauses in Safaitic (see Al-Jallad 2019).