DʿMT & early highlandsRIÉ 5 A

Lmn restores a cult chapel

A construction fragment names Lmn as victorious king of Ygʿḏ and mukarrib of DʿMT and Sabaʾ; DASI cautions against automatically joining it to RIÉ 5B.

Date: Early 1st millennium–5th/4th c. BCE (DASI Period A)
Place: Enda Tcherqos, Aksum/Melazo area, Ethiopia; reused in church wall
Language: Ethiopian Early Sabaic
Script: Ancient South Arabian

01 · Original text

Ethiopian Early Sabaic

Ancient South ArabianSurviving text; DASI lineation retained

𐩡𐩣𐩬 𐩣𐩡𐩫𐩬 𐩮𐩧𐩲𐩬 𐩺𐩴𐩲𐩹𐩺𐩬 𐩣𐩫𐩧𐩨 𐩵𐩲𐩣𐩩 𐩥-𐩪𐩨𐩱 𐩨𐩬 𐩧𐩨—

𐩢 (𐩣)[𐩡𐩫](𐩬) 𐩢𐩺𐩥𐩥 𐩥-𐩠𐩢𐩵𐩪𐩥 𐩣𐩹𐩤𐩬𐩩 𐩱𐩥(𐩪)𐩬 𐩨𐩺𐩩-𐩣𐩥 𐩺𐩥𐩣 [... ...]

Normalized Old South Arabian letters follow the DASI reading, including its line breaks and editorial brackets. See the image for the engraved letter forms.

Scholarly transliteration

Lmn mlkn ṣrʿn Ygʿḏyn mkrb Dʿmt w-S¹bʾ bn Rb— ḥ (m)[lk](n) ḥyww w-hḥds¹w mḏqnt ʾw(s¹)n byt-mw ywm [... ...]

02 · Translation

English translation

Lmn, the victorious king, he of Ygʿḏ, mukarrrib of Dʿmt and Sabaʾ, son of the king Rbḥ, restored and renewed the chapel of the idols of their house, when [... ...]

CSAI/DASI English translation; DASI record data licensed CC BY 4.0.

Joined across DASI display lines; editorial brackets and uncertainty marks are retained.

Sources

Editions & references

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

RIÉ 5A / DASI 7807
Giulia Buono (ed.), ‘RIÉ 5 A’, DASI, first published 2015-01-05.

Habesha History corpus

HYohannes, The Kingdom of DʿMT (2025)

David W. Phillipson (2012), p. 38