Nouveaux arguments en faveur d’une identification de la cité de Gerrha avec le royaume de Hagar (Arabie orientale)

South Arabian zabūr script in the Gulf: some recent discoveries from Mleiha (Sharjah, UAE)

“…In the Ancient South Arabian votive formulae, the predicate hqny/sqny ‘has dedicated’ is usually followed by the name of a deity—the addressee of the present offering . In the Mleiha inscription, the word following the verb can hardly be identified otherwise than with the common deity Lāt, which was worshipped throughout the Arabian Peninsula (Robin, : 142; Robin & Prioletta, : 158–159), and which occurs also as theophoric element in the name of the dedicant's father. In South Arabian sources, this deity is mentioned in the famous bronze amulet RES 4829 on which the goddess is addressed together with ʿUzzā (RES 4829/1–2: ḥgr ʿzyn w‐ 2 ltn ‘Protection of ʿZYN and LTN (over NN)’).…”

“…Proceeding from a spelling /Lāt/ of the deity's name, the article would have been assimilated to the following consonant (thus /hal‐Lāt/, literally ‘the goddess’) . Nevertheless, the divine element is regularly spelled ʾlt in those proper names in Hasaitic and preceded by a non‐assimilated article hn‐ (thus hn‐ʾlt , always in compound names such as ʾMT‐HN‐ʾLT; see Sima, : 193–194; Robin & Prioletta, : 152) . While the fact of non‐assimilation could easily be explained by the laryngeal character of the sound ʾ , which follows the n of the article, the spelling of the divine element with that sound clearly contrasts with the form without ʾ in the present inscription.…”

A woman's Hismaic inscription from the Wādī Ramm desert: AMJ 2/J.14202 (Amman Museum)

“… Macdonald, : 52, 54–55; : 508. See also Robin & Prioletta, : 146, n. 144, who note two Ancient South Arabian inscriptions containing the formula ḏ‐ʾl . …”

“… SHI 1, 7, 11, 12, 13, 29, 31, 33, 38, 39; cf. Robin & Prioletta, : 152. Note also the Sabaic inscription Ry 547, a text commissioned by inhabitants of Gerrha settled in southern Arabia, in which the feminine demonstrative occurs as ḏʾt , a trait referable to Hasaitic (Prioletta, : 288, n. 22). …”

“… On the probable provenance of Mü 2 from Qaryat al‐Fāw instead of from Najrān, see Robin & Prioletta, : 156. …”