Aksumite eraRIÉ 180

GDR’s inscribed bronze royal object

This complete seven-word Geʿez text on a curved bronze object gives GDR the short title ‘king of Aksum’ and is commonly treated as the earliest surviving indigenous royal inscription of the Aksumite period.

Date: late 2nd–early 3rd century CE
Place: Addi Gelemo, Ethiopia
Language: Geʿez
Script: Ethiopic

01 · Original text

Geʿez

EthiopicComplete text

ገደረ ነገሠየ አከሰመ ተበዐለ መዘለተ ለአረገ ወለለመቀ

Normalized first-order Ethiopic from the consonantal reading; the image preserves the early unvocalized letterforms.

Scholarly transliteration

gdr ngśy ʾksm tbʿl mzlt lʾrg wllmq

02 · Translation

English translation

GDR, king of Aksum: may his sceptre (?) exercise dominion over ʾRG and LMQ.

English rendering of Drewes’s French translation, Recueil des inscriptions de l’Éthiopie III/B (2019), p. 155.

The first three words and royal title are secure, while tbʿl, mzlt, ʾRG and LMQ remain disputed. Nebes (2010, p. 223) instead understands the object as a sceptre handed to GDR by ʾRG and LMQ; the display follows Drewes’s 2019 corpus interpretation and retains his question mark.

Sources

Editions & references

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

RIÉ 180
Étienne Bernand, Abraham J. Drewes and Roger Schneider, Recueil des inscriptions de l’Éthiopie des périodes pré-axoumite et axoumite, I (1991), pp. 219–220; Abraham J. Drewes, III.B (2019), p. 155.; CC BY-SA 4.0 for the Beta maṣāḥǝft TEI catalogue record
Further reference
Norbert Nebes, ‘Die Inschriften aus dem ʾAlmaqah-Tempel in ʿAddi ʾAkawəḥ (Tigray)’, Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie 3 (2010), p. 223 and n. 51
Further reference
Fabienne Dugast and Iwona Gajda, ‘Reconsidering contacts between southern Arabia and the highlands of Tigrai in the 1st millennium BC’ (2012 conference paper; HAL deposit 2015), p. 13
Further reference
André Caquot and Abraham J. Drewes, ‘Les monuments recueillis à Maqallé (Tigré)’, Annales d’Éthiopie 1 (1955), pp. 17–41 and plate XIII

Habesha History corpus

Abraham J. Drewes, Recueil des inscriptions de l’Éthiopie III.B, p. 155–160