KRS 30

Siglum: KRS 30
Transliteration: l ʾbn bn ʿnhlh h- dmy w ḫrṣ f h ṣlm ʾlh dmt rw<<>>ḥ
Translation: By ʾbn son of ʿnlh the Dumaite and he was cold and hungry and so O Ṣlm god of Dūmat {[grant] relief from adversity}

Interpretation

Apparatus Criticus: Robin 2000: 44, n. 124: dmt here must represent the place-name Dūmat (Akkadian Adummatu, modern Dūmat al-Jandal). Al-Jallad 2022: 59: ʾlh dmt "God of Dūmat"
Commentary: There is a m after the second w and the ḥ at the end is written to the side of the other letters. It seems likely that the m was a mistake and that the author finished the text in a different direction rather than crossing it out. There is no drawing with the inscription and it seems that h- dmy here represents the nisbah from Dūmat (Akkadian Adumatu, mediaeval Arabic and still today Dumat al-Jandal, al-Jawf) the oasis in north Arabia. This is the only Safaitic inscription known so far in which there is an invocation to the god Ṣlm, who is here called ‘the god of Dūmat’, but who is better known from the mid-sixth century BC to at least the mid first century AD as the chief god of Taymāʾ (see the dedication to Ṣlm in Taymāʾ Aramaic dated to AD 56/57 in Macdonald 2020: 117–118, TA 14285+14286+13651). As yet, neither of the personal names has been found in the inscriptions in and around Taymāʾ or Al-Jawf. However, ʿnlh (as opposed to ʿnhlh here) is found in a Hismaic text from Qārat al-Mazād, north of Sakākā (Al-Ḏīyīb 2003: no. 36).

Inscriptions recorded by Geraldine King on the Basalt Desert Rescue Survey in north-eastern Jordan in 1989 and published here
Al-Ḏīyīb [Al-Theeb], S.A. Nuqūš ṯamūdīyah ǧadīdah min al-ǧawf — al-mamlakat al-ʿarabīyat al-saʿūdīyah. Al-Riyāḍ: Maktabat al-malik fahd al-waṭaniyah, 2003.. Nuqūš ṯamūdīyah ǧadīdah min al-ǧawf — al-mamlakat al-ʿarabīyat al-saʿūdīyah. Al-Riyāḍ: Maktabat al-malik fahd al-waṭaniyah, 2003.
Macdonald, M.C.A. Catalogue of the Inscriptions discovered in the Saudi-German excavations at Taymāʾ 2004–2015. With contributions by A. Hausleiter, F. Imbert, H. Schaudig, P. Stein, F. Tourtet, and M. Trognitz . Oxford: Archaeopress, 2020.
Al-Jallad, A. The religion and rituals of the nomads of pre-Islamic Arabia: A reconstruction based on the Safaitic inscriptions. (Ancient Languages and Civilizations, 1). Leiden: Brill, 2022.
Robin, C.J. Allāh avant Muḥammad. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 49, 2000: 1—145