DAPTham 1

LANA, n. 3: ʾn rḫm ʿs², trans: “I am Rḫm, may I have a long life” (?); or "a personal name with a patronymic that is not introduced by bn – ʾn rḫm ʿs² - which is also highly unusual."

This fragmentary Thamudic D text belongs to the amorous formulaic genre: I am PN lover of (ʿs²q) PN (Al-Jallad 2025b: 3). The outline of the q following s² seems to be partially hammered but left incomplete. There is no trace of any name following this, suggesting that its author had abandoned the composition. Rohmer et al. 2025 argue that the late antique settlement of wādī al-Qurā, where this text was discovered, was Jewish. Thamudic D inscriptions span a period from at least the 3rd century CE up to the 5th century, as illustrated by ʿAlaqān Tham 1. Given this, it may be significant that Thamudic D was also used by Jewish Arabians. The famous Nabataean funerary inscription JSNab 17 from nearby Hegra records an invocation to mry ʿlmʾ 'Lord of Eternity', which is an epithet of the Jewish god. This implies that the man who commissioned the text and the grave for his mother was Jewish.  The named of the deceased is written in a bilingual fashion alongside the Nabataean text in Thamudic D (JSTham 1), suggesting an assocation between the script and some Jewish North Arabian communities.