Is.H 381

Macdonald 2005, 82: ʾ b {g] d z t ṯ q y m {ʿ} s² w l r ṣ ṭ h f s¹ n ḥ ḏ ġ ḍ k ḫ ẓ

A tracing of this inscription was originally published in Macdonald (2005/9), where it was labelled Al-ʿĪsāwī. Macdonald recognized the ʾ b g d sequence that starts the inscription, but correctly noticed that the rest of the letters do not correspond to the Aramaic order. He interpreted the discrepancy as a lapse in the author's memory of the abjad order. Al-Jallad (2026) argues that this is a partial list of the Safaitic glyph inventory in the Greek letter order, passing over Greek letters that have no equivalents in Safaitic. The equivalences are as follows:

 ʾ b g d z t {y} q l m n w r ṣ ṭ h f k

Α Β Γ Δ Ζ Θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ο Ρ Σ Τ Υ Φ Χ

There is abundant evidence for Greek literacy among the nomads east of Ḥawrān (see Al-Jallad 2022c and Al-Jallad and al-Manaser 2022 for an overview), so awareness of the Greek letter order is not surprising. This phenomenon would then parallel the Hismaic abecedary arranged according to the Aramaic letter order (Knauf 1985; Macdonald 1992).