LP 404

Siglum: LP 404
Alternative Sigla: Is.Mu 172
Transliteration: l ʿwḏ bn ṣʿd bn lʿṯmn f h lt s¹lm m- bʾs¹
Translation: By ʿwḏ son of Ṣʿd son of Lʿṯmn. So, Lt may [grant] security from despair

Interpretation

Apparatus Criticus: LP did not copy the ḏ of the first name and so read ʿw for ʿwḏ.
Commentary: Chiselled in small neat letters down the left side of the figure and curving round below her feet. Note the difference in shape between the s¹ in s¹lm and that in bʾs¹.

Provenance: Al-ʿĪsāwī is the name of a probably ancient well between two headlands on the eastern side of the Wādī Shām as it runs northwards from the modern Al-Namārah dam to the Ruḥbah. The well is large, stone lined and with stone water-channels running from it. The main concentration of published inscriptions is on the top of the northern headland, but there also many inscriptions on its south-west slopes, coming down to the well and on the southern headland, on the crest of which is a stone tower. Littmann visited the site twice when he and other members of the expeditions copied some 450 inscriptions. Between 1996 and 2003, the Safaitic Epigraphic Survey Programme [SESP] made a comprehensive survey of the site recording over 3500 inscriptions.

Littmann, E. Safaïtic Inscriptions. Syria. Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to Syria in 1904–1905 and 1909. Division IV. Section C. Leiden: Brill, 1943.
Macdonald, M.C.A., Al Muʾazzin, M. & Nehmé, L. Les inscriptions safaïtiques de Syrie, cent quarante ans après leur découverte. Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres 1996: 435-494.
Inscriptions recorded at al-ʿĪsāwī by Muna Al-Muʾazzin, on the Safaitic Epigraphic Survey Programme, 1995–2002, and published here.