Habesha History
Profile

DʿMT & early highlandsRIÉ 2

The kingship of DʿMT

Early 1st millennium–5th/4th c. BCEAbba Pantaleon, Aksum

A two-line royal fragment preserves the formula ‘became king of DʿMT, its east and west’ and the deity ḏt-Bʿdn.

The two-line RIÉ 2 sandstone fragment from Abba Pantaleon, reproduced as DAE IV inscription 1
Enno Littmann, Sabaische, griechische und altabessinische Inschriften, Deutsche Aksum-Expedition IV (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1913), p. 1 (PDF p. 11), ‘Inschrift 1. Originalphotographie.’ Photograph: Theodor von Lüpke. Resized and converted to WebP.1913 publication; public domain in the United States.Enlarge image ↗

Early Sabaic

Surviving text

[… …]𐩣𐩡𐩫𐩥 𐩵𐩲𐩣𐩩 𐩣𐩦𐩧𐩤[𐩠𐩺 𐩥𐩣𐩲𐩧𐩨𐩠𐩺 … …] [… …]𐩥𐩹𐩩𐩨𐩲𐩵𐩬 𐩥𐩱𐩨[𐩫 𐩥𐩵𐩣 … …]

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

Transliteration

[… …]mlkw Dʿmt ms²rq[-hy w-mʿrb-hy … …] [… …]w-ḏt-Bʿdn w-ʾb-[k Wdm … …]

English translation

[…] he became king of DʿMT, its east [and its west …]; […] and ḏt-Bʿdn and your father [Wdm …].

DASI CSAI English translation; data CC BY 4.0

Sources & references

  1. RIÉ 2 / DAE 1 / RES 3549 / CIH 505 / DASI 7566

    Giulia Buono, ‘RIÉ 2 DAE 1; RES 3549; CIH 505’, DASI, first published 2015-01-05

Habesha History corpus

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