KMH 34-38

s³wd: This is a common name in the Arabian onomasticon, attested numerous times in ANA. It corresponds with the Classical Arabic term sawād 'blackness'.

y{s¹}lf: The reading of the second glyph is questionable. It is most easily taken as an s¹, producing the root slf 'to pass by', 'to come first' (Lane, 1048). This sense suits the context of a passerby painting an inscription while halting for shelter. It cannot be read as an h, but one could plausibly argue taking it as a ḫ. If this is correct, then it produces a 3rd masculine singular prefix conjugated verb, which I would interpret as an imperfective. The basic sense of this root is 'to leave behind', but the verb yeḫálef in Mehri has the meaning of 'to transhume' (Johnstone 1987, 439). This is especially attractive considering how common this genre is in other ANA corpora. We do not, however, have enough context to narrow down its precise meaning with certainty, so 'to set off (on a journey)' is a simple guess until more context becomes available. At the current moment, I would argue for the first reading but leave open the possibility of the second if it is confirmed by its attestation in similar formulae elsewhere. In terms of tense, it is most natural to read this as a preterite prefix conjugation, but an imperfective meaning is impossible to rule out as well.

ymd: The prefix conjugated verb of md 'to make an offering', attested as a suffix conjugated verb in KMH 9-1. I would understand it as a serial verbal complement of ys¹lf, a construction attested in Modern South Arabian and modern Arabic.

w s¹ry: This verb has been previously attested in Safaitic, where it has been conventionally travelled as 'to travel by night' based on the Classical Arabic meaning. It is possible that the verb has a military sense as well (Lane, 1355c). The switch in the suffix conjugation signals that this event occurred anteriorly to the main event.

ḥd: This term could be understood as being derived from the root ḥdd 'border', 'limit' but more likely we are dealing with a second verb or an infinitive possibly form the root ḥyd which carries the sense of 'turning away' (Lane, 684-685). I carefully suggest the sense of lacking or being cut off here based on what follows.

qyt: This substantive is attested in Safaitic meaning 'protection,' derived from the root wqy.

w nmrḍ: This appears to be the n-stem of the verb 'to be/become ill', mariḍa in Arabic. This understanding would take it as a past event, antiorior to the main verb yḫlf in the first column.

s¹wt: The identification of this word is extremely difficult. There is no suitable root s¹wt (this means only 'whip' if we assume the de-emphasis of the final stop or voice if the same is assumed about the first consonant), and so I would suggest deriving it from the root s¹wʾ meaning 'evil,' but with the internal loss of the glottal stop. The glottal stop seems to be unstable in the linguistic varieties of this region, and so it is possible that this term is cognate with Arabic sūʾ- 'leprosy,' but with the feminine ending.

/: This narrow line between the t and b can only be understood as a word divider. While not used consistently, Dhofari 1a does employ them from time to time

b- ʾwṣ: The first element is the locative preposition b-, while the second is extremely difficult to interpret. There do not seem to be any cognate roots from ʾGṣ/ẓ, but Ibn Manẓūr (Lisān, 190) records an isolated noun ʾayṣ, which means 'a place,' in a spatial sense. Given that the word is completely isolated in Arabic, it is possible that it is a substrate word from a pre-Arabic language. I would, therefore, suggest that ʾwṣ is related to this word, with the well-attested interchange between w- and y-roots. As such, we can translate it as 'in a place,' but in the present context metaphorically as 'in a state of.'

ḥy{r}: The ink of the final r has bled, creating a small tail, but this should not be confused for a vertical line as the stroke narrows, a phenomenon that does not affect any other glyph. The term should be compared with Arabic ḥāra (ḥyr) 'to be confounded' (Lane, 684c), and specifically with the idiom ʾinnahū fī ḥīra bīra / ḥūra būra 'he is in a bad state...a state of perdition' (Lane, 685a).