A 1

Al-Jallad and al-Manaser 2015 (editio princeps) offer an alternative parsing of ΜΙΣΕΙΑΖ as miś-śiḥaṣ 'because of scarcity' but disprefer this to the reading and translation provided here, which is found in Al-Jallad and al-Manaser (2015: 52) and refined in Al-Jallad (2020: 111).

This is perhaps the most important inscription that informs the vocalization of the dialects expressed in the Safaitic inscriptions. A full discussion of its linguistic features can be found in Al-Jallad and al-Manaser 2015. Al-Jallad (2020:111) reconstructs the vocalization of the inscription as follows:

ʾAws (bin) hūd (?) (bin) Bannāʾ (bin) Kazim ʾal-ʾidāmiyy ʾatawa mis-seʿīʿ śatāw wa Bannāʾa ʾad-dawra wa yirʿaw baqla bi-kānūn

1) The author most likely identifies himself as an Edomite, Safaitic ʾdmy /ʾidāmiyy/, but note the reversal of the Canaanite shift, as in ʿammān < ʿammōn.

2) The 3rd masculine singular suffix conjugation 'he came' corresponds to Classical Arabic ʾatā but preserves the final triphthong, ʾatawa, as in Gəʿəz and Safaitic ʾtw (rare), ʾty (common).

3) The accusative case is attested in baqla “fresh herbage” and in the name bannāʾa, where it follows the wāw al-maʿiyyah 'comitative wāw'.

4) The *s² of the infinitive “to spend the winter” is spelled with a mirrored Zeta, ζαθαοε /śatāw/, reflecting a bit of hesistation on the part of the author as to how to represent this foreign sound in Greek.

5) The name of the town of Sīʿ is spelled identically to its transcription in Greek inscriptions, and corresponds to Nabataean sʿyʿ and Safaitic s¹ʿʿ. This suggests the pronunciation /seʿīʿā/.