AMJ 005

Interpretation

Apparatus Criticus: TEXT Jogling: ḥs¹r tʿṣf for ṭs¹rtʿ{ṣ} f and wgy rather than w ḍy. DISCUSSION King (1990: 609) commented: "The interpretation of the central part of the text is uncertain. The eleventh letter might be a ṣ as read by Jobling (1982: 469) although it would be an unusual shape. The curved top of the letter might have been added later, in which case the letter would be z. byt, cf. Ar. bāta ‘spend the night’. ḍy might be translated from Ar. ḍwy, ḍawā ‘take refuge, come by night’. One would expect the second radical to be represented orthographically in either the perfect or active participle, although ḍayy occurs in Ar. as a verbal noun, cf. the occurrence of ḍy in KJC 46".

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 [Unpublished]. 1990.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. The Aqaba-Maʿan Archaeological and Epigraphic Survey 1982 Season. Liber Annuus 32, 1982: 467-470, plates p. 111-113.
Jobling, W.J. The 1982 Archaeological and Epigraphic Survey of the ʿAqaba-Maʿan Area of Southern Jordan. Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 27, 1983: 185-196.