DʿMT & early highlandsRIÉ 1

Wʿrn’s temple restoration

Early 1st millennium–5th/4th c. BCEAmda Tsyon, Ethiopia

A royal temple-restoration slab naming Wʿrn Ḥywt and a female dynastic figure, but not DʿMT itself.

The five-line monumental RIÉ 1 slab from Amda Tsyon/Seglamen near Aksum — Fabienne Dugast and Iwona Gajda, ‘Reconsidering contacts between southern Arabia and the highlands of Tigrai in the 1st millennium BC according to epigraphic data’, 18th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Dire Dawa, 2012), 18e ICES p. 6 (PDF p. 7), captioned ‘Monumental A’ (RIÉ 1). Resized and converted to WebP.Reproduced with permission for Habesha History. No onward reuse licence.Enlarge image ↗

Early Sabaic

Surviving text

𐩥𐩲𐩧𐩬 𐩢𐩺𐩥𐩩 𐩣𐩡𐩫𐩬 𐩮𐩧𐩲𐩬 𐩨𐩬 𐩨𐩬 𐩪𐩡𐩣𐩣 𐩰𐩷𐩧𐩬 𐩥𐩪𐩣𐩲𐩩𐩣 𐩲𐩧𐩫𐩩𐩬 𐩨𐩬𐩩 𐩮𐩨𐩢𐩬 𐩠𐩢𐩵𐩪𐩥 𐩨𐩺𐩩 𐩠𐩨𐩪 𐩨𐩲𐩡 𐩲𐩹𐩩 𐩺𐩥𐩣 𐩠𐩣𐩡𐩫𐩠𐩣𐩥 𐩲𐩪𐩩𐩧 𐩥𐩠𐩨𐩪 𐩥𐩱𐩡𐩣𐩤𐩠 𐩥𐩹𐩩𐩢𐩣𐩺𐩣 𐩥𐩹𐩩𐩨𐩲𐩵𐩬 𐩥𐩱𐩨𐩫 𐩥𐩵𐩣

Normalized script from the cited reading; brackets mark restored or missing text.

Transliteration

Wʿrn Ḥywt mlkn ṣrʿn bn bn S¹lmm Fṭrn w-S¹mʿtm ʿrktn bnt Ṣbḥn hḥds¹w byt Hbs¹ bʿl ʿḏt ywm hmlkhmw ʿs¹tr w-Hbs¹ w-ʾlmqh w-ḏt-Ḥmym w-ḏt-Bʿdn w-ʾb-k Wdm

English translation

Wʿrn Ḥywt, the victorious king, descendant of S¹lmm Fṭrn and of S¹mʿtm, the wife, daughter of Ṣbḥn, restored the temple of Hbs¹, Lord of ʿḏt, when ʿs¹tr, Hbs¹, ʾlmqh, ḏt-Ḥmym, ḏt-Bʿdn and your father Wdm made him king.

DASI CSAI English translation, lightly joined across lines; data CC BY 4.0

Sources & references

RIÉ 1 / DEE V 52 / DASI 7561
Giulia Buono, ‘RIÉ 1 DEE, V, 52’, DASI, first published 2015-01-05

Habesha History corpus

David W. Phillipson, Foundations of an African Civilisation (2012), p. 38

Fabienne Dugast and Iwona Gajda (2012), p. 11