DʿMT & early highlandsAfṣe 1

Fragmentary dedication to ʿAttar and Wadd

A heavily eroded middle fragment preserves parts of two boustrophedon lines, including a dedicatory verb and the gods ʿAttar and Wadd; the latter’s epithet is lost.

Date: Early 1st millennium BCE (DʿMT-period context; no narrower date stated by Weninger)
Place: Abba Afṣe monastery exhibition room, Yeha, Tǝgray, Ethiopia
Language: Ethio-Sabaean (Old Sabaic ductus)
Script: Ancient South Arabian

01 · Original text

Ethio-Sabaean (Old Sabaic ductus)

Ancient South ArabianComplete surviving two-line fragment; both sides of the original text are lost

… [𐩬]𐩩𐩣 / 𐩠𐩤𐩬[𐩺 /] …

… 𐩲𐩩𐩩𐩧 / 𐩥𐩥𐩵𐩣 / 𐩹 …

Letter forms follow Weninger’s edition. The arrows in the line labels reproduce its boustrophedon directions; square brackets are editorial restorations. In wwdm, initial w is the conjunction ‘and’.

Scholarly transliteration

… [n]tm / hqn[y /] … … ʿttr / wwdm / ḏ …

02 · Translation

English translation

Line 1

… (?) dedicated …

Line 2

… ʿAttar and Wadd of …

Habesha History English translation of Weninger’s German translation, Aethiopica 10 (2007), p. 56.

The name before hqny is lost; [n]tm is only the possible tail of a mimated personal name. The epithet after ḏ is also lost.

Sources

Editions & references

Edition, catalogue, and image records used for this entry.

Weninger, Aethiosabaeica minora
Stefan Weninger, ‘Aethiosabaeica minora’, Aethiopica 10 (2007), 52–57.

Habesha History corpus

Stefan Weninger, ‘Aethiosabaeica minora’ (2007), pp. 55–56