RQ.A 4

Interpretation

Commentary: RQ.A 4 and 5 are on the same face and enclosed in the same lightly scratched cartouche. This text is in the semi-square script and is written parallel with the first line of 5.

Provenance: “Rijm Qaʿqūl A” is about 900 m to the south-east of the Ruḥbah water tower, on the right bank of Wādī Shām before it arrives in the Ruḥbah. It is a large cairn with a few ruined houses and very few inscriptions. The name "Rijm Qaʿqūl" was applied by nineteenth-century visitors to at least four large outcrops at the southern end of the Ruḥbah, to the south and south-west of the modern water tower. This helps to explain the curious fact that there is no overlapping between the "Rijm Qaʿqūl" copies of de Vogüé (de Vogüé 1868–1877: nos. 212–215, 217, 219–224, 226–234, 389) and Waddington (de Vogüé 1868–1877: nos. 235–253, 388, 390–393, 397–400), Wetzstein (1860: nos 41–48, and at "a mound 10 minutes from Rijm Qaʿqūl", nos 68–88) and Dussaud/ Macler (1903: nos 30–51, 53–124), and only in a very few cases between those of de Vogüé and Waddington. We only identified the site visited by Wetzstein (Rijm Qaʿqūl A) and by but have not yet found those where de Vogüé /Waddington and Dusaud/Macler worked. The inscriptions we found at Rijm Qaʿqūl A were all texts copied by Wetzstein and no one else. It is likely therefore that this is the place he regarded as "Rijm Qaʿqūl".