The Palmyrenes in a new Safaitic inscription

Abstract

This paper deals with a new ancient North Arabian (Safaitic) inscription discovered by Rafe Harahsheh during his epigraphical survey in the Jordanian Ḥarrah. This new text contains a reference to a person who was protecting Palmyrenes and helping them in following the traces of something (probably a caravan). It contains the verb qyf and the tribal name mslq which have not been recorded in the published Safaitic inscriptions yet. The paper includes a discussion of al-qiyāfah “following the traces” among the Arabs, and the Palmyrene caravans as attested in the published inscriptions and the historical sources.

The Religion and Rituals of the Nomads of Pre-Islamic Arabia

“…However, I prefer the sense of guidance, which is a kind of protection after all, given its other occurrence in Safaitic, where it seems to apply to a guide. This text was published by Al-Salameen et al (2019). I give my reading and interpretation of the narrative here: qyẓ mʿ-ʾl tdmr ʿl-fnyt ḫfr l-hm "and he spent the dry season with the people of Palmyra on the edge of Fnyt acting as a guide for him"; the editio princeps incorrectly reads qyẓ as qyf and translates ḫfr as "protecting them."…”