LP 675

Siglum: LP 675
Transliteration: l ʿwḏ bn s¹ʾb bn ʿwḏn w ṣyr m- h- nmrt ḥḍr s¹nt ngy h- rmy f (h) (l)t s¹(l)m w wgd ʾṯr (ʿ)wḏn f ngʿ
Translation: By ʿwḏ son of S¹ʾb son of ʿwḏn and he returned from H-Nmrt where he had camped by water the year the Roman escaped. {So} O Lt [grant] security and he found the traces of {ʿwḏn} and longed [for him]

Interpretation

Apparatus Criticus: LP: hrmy could also represent a personal name. MNH p. 331 and n. 185: s¹nt ngy h- rmy "the year the Rmy escaped".
Commentary: H-nmrt, modern Al-Namārah, is a place of semi-permanent water in the Wādī al-Shām (in the Syrian desert) approximately 20 kms (as the crow flies) east-north-east of Ṣanāyim al-Gharz where this inscription was found. The latter is near Wādī al-Gharz and one possibility could be that the author had been camping at al-Namārah but that the water there had run out and so he moved to Ṣanāyim al-Gharz. However, since al-Namārah has a huge natural water catchment area (now made into an artificial lake) it seems unlikely that there would be a shortage of water there but not at Senayim. In view of this, it seems better to translate ṣyr here as simply "he returned" rather than "he returned to permanent water".

Provenance: Unfortunately, the Safaitic Epigraphic Survey Programme was unable to locate the sites of Qabr Nāṣir and Ṣanāyim al-Gharz and they do not appear in Geonames. Dussaud & Macler describe Ghadīr al-Darb as "a muddy pool of water" in Wādī al-Gharz (1903: 27 [429]). The co-ordinates given above are those provided by Geonames, but this places it some 220 m north of the left bank of the Wādī, so they should be taken as approximate.

Littmann, E. Safaïtic Inscriptions. Syria. Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to Syria in 1904–1905 and 1909. Division IV. Section C. Leiden: Brill, 1943.
Macdonald, M.C.A. Nomads and the Ḥawrān in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods: A reassessment of the epigraphic evidence. Syria 70, 1993: 303-413. [Reprinted with the same pagination, plus addenda and corrigenda as Article II in M.C.A. Macdonald, Literacy and Identity in Pre-Islamic Arabia, (Variorum Collected Studies Series no. 906), Farnham: Ashgate, 2009].

Site: “On the road from Qabr Nāṣir to Ṣanāyim al-Ġarz not far east from Ġadīr]al-Darb" (Littmann 1943: 170), Al-Suwaydāʾ (al-Sweidah) Governorate, Syria

Date Found: 1904–1905
Current Location: In situ
Subjects: Date (s¹nt), Deity, Finding inscription(s), Genealogy, Grieving, Isolated Prayer, Movement, Outside peoples, Place-name, Watering
Script: Safaitic
Old OCIANA ID: #0009259
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