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Aksumite eraRIÉ 185 II

ʿEzana’s Beja campaign and royal titulary

first half of the 4th century CEAksum, Ethiopia

The royal text names ʿEzana’s dominions and commemorates the defeat, provisioning, and resettlement of Beja groups under six subordinate kings.

Deutsche Aksum-Expedition plate of Ezana’s RIÉ 185 inscription in South Arabian and Ethiopic scripts, with photograph and traced reading.
Deutsche Aksum-Expedition; Enno Littmann (ed.), Sabäische, griechische und altabessinische Inschriften (1913), Tafel I. Resized and converted to WebP.Public domain · 1913 edition.Enlarge image ↗

Geʿez

Excerpt · opening titulary, lines 1–4

ዐዘነ ነገሠ አከሰመ [ወ]ሐመየረ ወከሰ ወሰበአ ወሐበሠተ ወረየደነ ወሰለሐ ወጸየመ ወበገ ነገሠ ነገሠተ ወለደ መሐረመ ዘ[አ]የተመወአ

Normalized transcription from the cited reading; original letterforms appear in the image.

Transliteration

ʿzn ngś ʾksm [w]ḥmyr wks wsbʾ wḥbśt wrydn wslḥ wṣym wbg ngś ngśt wld mḥrm z[ʾ]ytmwʾ

English translation

ʿEzana, king of Aksum, Himyar, Kāsū, Sabaʾ, Ḥabašat, Raydān, Salḥēn, Ṣeyāmō, and Bega; king of kings, son of unconquered Maḥrem…

English rendering after Beta Maṣāḥǝft, RIÉ 185 II (CC BY-SA 4.0); compared with Binyam and Krebs (2024), p. 14.

Sources & references

  1. RIÉ 185 and 270

    RIÉ 185 and 270 — Beta maṣāḥǝft / Hiob-Ludolf-Zentrum für Äthiopistik; CC BY-SA 4.0

Habesha History corpus

Yonatan Binyam and Verena Krebs, Ethiopia and the World, 330–1500 CE, p. 14

Abraham J. Drewes, Recueil des inscriptions de l’Éthiopie III.B, p. 197