DʿMT & early highlandsHenze 1

Fragmentary dedication naming Almaqah and perhaps Yeha

A middle fragment of a raised-relief stone slab preserves four alternating lines of a dedication to Almaqah; Weninger tentatively reads yḥʾ as the ancient spelling of Yeha but explicitly leaves that identification uncertain.

Date: Early 1st millennium BCE (DʿMT-period context; no narrower date stated by Weninger)
Place: Parakleitos monastery, near the old Adigrat–Däbrä Damo road, Tǝgray, Ethiopia
Language: Ethio-Sabaean (Old Sabaic ductus)
Script: Ancient South Arabian

01 · Original text

Ethio-Sabaean (Old Sabaic ductus)

Ancient South ArabianComplete surviving four-line fragment; most of the original text is lost

… 𐩧 / …

… [𐩠𐩤𐩬𐩺 /] [𐩡]𐩱𐩡𐩣𐩤𐩠 / 𐩹 …

… 𐩺𐩢𐩱 / 𐩱𐩹 / 𐩡𐩱𐩫 …

… 𐩡𐩱𐩡𐩣𐩤𐩠 …

Letter forms follow Weninger’s edition. The arrows in the line labels reproduce its boustrophedon directions; square brackets are editorial restorations. See the photograph for the engraved letter forms.

Scholarly transliteration

… r / … … [hqny /] [l]ʾlmqh / ḏ … … yḥʾ / ʾḏ / lʾk … … lʾlmqh …

02 · Translation

English translation

Line 1

… (?) …

Line 2

… dedicated (singular or plural?) to Almaqah of …

Line 3

… Yeha (?), when he sent …

Line 4

… for Almaqah …

Habesha History English translation of Weninger’s German translation, Aethiopica 10 (2007), p. 53.

This translates only the surviving fragments. The restoration of hqny and l and the identification of yḥʾ with Yeha are editorial proposals, not secure text.

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. 52–53