OCIANA
Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia

KhS 17

Text Information

Siglum
KhS 17
Transliteration
l ḥs²b bn ---- w bkr l- gzr
Translation
By Ḥs²b son of ---- and he woke early to slaughter [a camel]

Interpretation

Apparatus Criticus
KhMNS: Translation of bkr l gzr "and he woke up early to hunt" (wa bakkara li-l-ṣayd).
Commentary
Safaitic gzr can be connected with Arabic ǧazara, "he rose early to slaughter a camel" (see Lane 418b ǧazara la-hum "he slaughtered a camel for them" and 419a s.v. ǧazūr "a camel for slaughter" as in the expression raʿati l-ǧazūru "The camel for slaughter pastured". Jaussen (1908: 168) recounts that, at the end of a successful raid, a group of the Benī Sakhr in central Jordan consecrated a superb white she-camel as a ǧezūr to their ancestor Asʿad. The normal word for "to hunt" in Safaitic is ṣyd. Thus, if this interpretation is correct, the inscription is not referring to the hunting scene that accompanies it, as suggested by Al-Khraysheh..

Provenance
al-Ḥarrah al-ʾUrduniyyah
Original Reading Credit
Ed. pr.
Original Translation Credit
OCIANA

Technique
No copy/photo

Associated Drawings
A horseman with a spear pursuing an oryx and an ostrich
Associated Inscriptions

  • Jaussen, A. Coutumes des Arabes au pays de Moab. [reprinted Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1948]. Paris: Gadalba, 1908.
  • Al-Khraysheh, F. Al-ṣayd ʿind al-ʿarab al-ṣafāʾiyīn qabl al-islām. Journal of Epigraphy and Rock Drawings 1, 2007: 9-28.
Site
Wādī Miqāṭ, Jordan
Current Location
In situ
Subjects
Domestic animals, Genealogy, Religion
Script
Safaitic
Old OCIANA ID
#0030289
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