Habesha History
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Aksumite eraRIÉ 223

The Hawulti stela at Matara

3rd century CEMatara, Eritrea

A short memorial inscription states that ʾGZ commissioned the stela for his ancestors and that two named companions transported it.

Close view of the four-line early Ethiopic RIÉ 223 inscription on the Hawulti stela at Matara, Eritrea.
Sailko, own photograph, 26 November 2015. Resized and converted to WebP.CC BY 3.0.Enlarge image ↗

Geʿez

Complete text

ዘ ሀወለተ ዘአገበረ አገዘ ለአበወሀ ወሰሀበ መሀዘተ ወአወአለፈ ወጸበለ

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

Transliteration

z hwlt zʾgbr ʾgz lʾbwh wshb mhzt wʾwʾlf wṣbl

English translation

This is the stela which ʾGZ had made for his ancestors. His friends, WʾLF and ṢBL, transported it.

English rendering of Drewes’s French translation, Recueil des inscriptions de l’Éthiopie III/B (2019), p. 320.

Sources & references

  1. RIÉ 223

    RIÉ 223 — Beta maṣāḥǝft / Hiob-Ludolf-Zentrum für Äthiopistik; CC BY-SA 4.0

  2. Further reference

    Enno Littmann, DAE IV (1913), pp. 61–62, no. 34

Habesha History corpus

Abraham J. Drewes, Recueil des inscriptions de l’Éthiopie III.B, p. 318–322

Francis Anfray, Matara: the Archaeological Investigation of a City of Ancient Eritrea, p. 18