SNHS 1

SNHS 1: f ʿqd m- ʾbḥrn "then clung to the seas" for f ʿy{d} m- ʾ[[]]bḥr l-   

Comments on the editio princeps: 

The word following s¹fnt is not entirely clear and is difficult to interpret. However, SNHS's reading ʿqd is impossible. The loop is far too high on the shaft to be taken as a q. The following letter was read as a d but the loop would be very lightly scratched. Context suggests that this is the correct reading; however, an l cannot be ruled out with certainty. The h before bḥr has been erased by the author. The reading of the glyph following bḥr as an n also seems unlikely. It is the full length of the ṯ in contrast to the n of ṯlṯn, which is clearly much smaler. The glpyh should rather be read as an l. 

This inscription records the journey of a sailor from the Ḥarrah. Bḥr means not only "sea" but also "large river" (Lane 156c, who even gives the Euphrates as an example), so we cannot know exactly where his journey led him. The meaning of the final phrase is also a bit puzzling: l-ṯlṯn s¹nt means clearly 'for thirty years', but is this to be understood as the time our sailor spent at sea, connecting it to the phrase ngy b-h-s¹fnt, or should we understand it him having returned 'thirty years ago.' The inscription would therefore be a recollection of a significant event in the author's life. The author's activity at sea was likely military, as the verb ngy, when active appears to mean 'to go forth to fight' or 'to announce, declare (usually to do with military leadership),' besides its more common meaning 'to escape.' Without further context, all of these meaning are possible interpretations of the verb in the present inscription.

s¹fnt: This word is attested for the first time here, and is clearly cognate with the Arabic safīnatun, Hebrew sᵊfīnāh, Aramaic, sǝp̄īntā.

ʿy{d}: ʿyd, cognate with Classical Arabic ʿāda 'to return.'

ʾ-[[ ]]bḥr:  The author seems to deploy two forms of the definite article, h- and ʾ-. On ʾ-bḥr, he seems to have recognized that he used the ʾ-article, then wrote an h-, but then erased the h- settling for his original choice. Alternatively, ʾbḥr could be a plural, ʾabḥār, but the construction would be strange without a definite article - 'he returned from seas.'