AMJ 064

Siglum: AMJ 064
Transliteration: w {n}ṣ s²gy f bt blgt ʿl h- ḫml
Translation: And S²gy {fled} and was [here] at dawn on the tract of sand with pasture

Interpretation

Apparatus Criticus: King (1990: 614–615) commented: "The second letter is rather long and slightly curved. It might be a r facing backwards but it is more likely that the lower ‘nick’ is a chip that flaked away during the inscribing of the dash of a n. The b’s are all facing downwards even though the text is written horizontally. nṣ, cf. Ar. nāṣa ‘flee’. Ar. bāta means ‘spend the night’ (cf. byt in AMJ 5) but, if it is translated with that meaning here, it is difficult to see how the rest of the text should translate. Perhaps it should be taken here with the meaning ‘was’, cf. Lane 279b, bāta bimawḍiʿ kaḏā ‘he was in such a place’. blgt, cf. Ar. baljah ‘the light of dawn’. The word would be an adverbial accusative. It is less likely that b should be taken as the preposition bi with the meaning ‘with’ and lgt read either as a proper name or as a substantive, cf. Ar. lujjah ‘a numerous assembly, troop’. Ar. ḫamīlah means ‘a tract of ground producing good pasture or trees’ and probably ḫml should be translated here with a similar meaning. ḫmlt occurs in Saf. WH 1771, 3093, 3691b and ʾḫml in ISB 438".
Commentary: The text has not been read by Jobling 1985.

King, G.M.H. Early North Arabian Thamudic E. A preliminary description based on a new corpus of inscriptions from the Ḥismā desert of southern Jordan and published material. Ph.D thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1990. [Unpublished]. 1990.
Jobling, W.J. Preliminary Report of the Sixth Season of the ʿAqaba-Maʿan Epigraphic and Archaeological Survey. Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 29, 1985: 211-220.