<The language of ancient #Tayma (mod. Saudi Arabia)> 1) mannū samiʿ li-ṣalm lā tawaya ‘whosoever heeds Ṣalm shall not perish’. This prayer is carved a number of times on stone around the oasis of Taymāʾ, in N. Saudi Arabia, in a long lost script and language called Taymanitic.
2) Its alphabet consists of 26 glyphs, and is related to, but not a descendant of, the Musnad script of Ancient Yemen. The language remains poorly understood. It nevertheless shares some interesting similarities with #Hebrew and other Northwest Semitic languages. Pic: WTay 20
3) Before we get to the language, let’s talk about what these texts say. Most appear to be graffiti, some left by soldiers during their military service. The inscriptions express devotion to a single god, named Ṣalm, literally ‘image’, 'effigy', = Arabic ṣanam. Pic: Esk 288
4) WTay 20: A man named Bhśrkt states: naṣar bi-ḍarr dadān yarḫ li-ṣalm: ‘he kept watch for a month for (the sake of) Ṣalm (the god) during the war against Dadān’. WTay 15 (pic) express a similar idea, but during the war against Nbyt, = Nabayoth (≠ Nabaṭaeans).
5) Most of the short texts are extremely difficult to understand, suggesting that Taymanitic was very different from any Semitic language today. Al-Mušayrifah Tay 3 states (pic): 1: {s³}{d}w{s²}{d}{s³}ʿl 2: {s³}ʿltns¹r{ʿ}m{k}l . The reading is clear but the text makes no sense.
6) One of the longest Taymanitic texts is much easier to understand and date. The inscription discovered by Eskoubi attests Nabonidus’, the Babylonian king, occupation of the oasis in the middle of the 1st millennium BCE.
7) The phenomenal text Esk. 013 reads:
1: ʾn/mrdn/{ḫ}lm/nbnd/mlk/bbl
2: ʾtwt/mʿ/rbs¹rs¹/kyt
3: {ʿ}nm/b- fl{ʾ}/tlw/b{d}t/lʿq
Translation
1: I am Mrdn {servant of} Nabonidus king of Babylon
2: I came with the Chief Officer Kyt
3: …
8) Some seals with Taymanitic writing are also known. This one (Staatliche Münzsammlung, Munich A.1351) bears the name ybḥrʾl = yabḥur-ʾil (?)
9) While the language remains difficult to understand, it shares some significant similarities with #Hebrew and #NorthwestSemitic. For example, the verb ‘to give’ seems to have been /natan/. JSTham 352 states: bi-ṣalm natant ‘I have made an offering for Ṣalm’
10) Its phonology is similar to #Hebrew and other #Canaanite languages. For example, the common name ḏiʾb ‘wolf’ is spelled zʾb /ziʾb/, as in #Hebrew ze’ev (זאב), indicating that ḏ (ḏal) was pronounced [z].
11) This also happens with the emphatic ẓ. The equivalent of the Arabic word naẓara ‘to watch’ is in Taymanitic /naṣar/ (not to be confused with ‘to help’), similar to Hebrew /nāṣar/ = נָצַר. The word for ‘month’ is yarḫ, compare to Hebrew yeraḥ יָרֵחַ.
12) The personal names of Taymanitic share some similarities with Amorite names, for example Amorites. Esk 183 (pic) yismaʿil = Ishmael. Others attest devotion to the local deity, Ṣalm, e.g. ṣmntn ‘ṣalm has given’.
13) It is unclear when Taymanitic, the script and language, disappeared. After the fall of Babylon, the Liḥyanite kings from West Arabia conquered the oasis. By the 1st c. BCE, Taymāʾ fell to the Nabataeans, who I suggest introduced Arabic to the region.
14) We don't know when the worship of Ṣalm ceased. No memory of him survives into the Islamic period, but a curious #Safaitic inscription from Jordan may suggest that his cult remained popular even after the fall of Taymāʾ as an independent power.
15) KRS 30: le-ʾabn ben ʿaynhallāh had-dūmeyy wa-ḫaraṣa fa-hā ṣalm ʾelāha dūmata rawweḥ ‘By Abn son of Aynhallāh the Dumaite, and he kept watch so, O Ṣalm, god of Dūmat, send ease!’ The cult of Ṣalm, it seems, had spread to Dūmah (mod. Dumat al-Jandal) by turn of the Era.
16) New surveys in the region will no doubt shed more light on this lost language of Arabia and the culture it records. Everything you’d like to know about Taymanitic, the language, can be found in this masterful article by @Folk_Kootstra arabianepigraphicnotes.org/journal/articl…
Biblio:
[Esk] Eskūbī [Eskoubi] Ḫ.M. Dirāsah taḥlīliyyah muqāranah li-nuqūš min minṭaqah (rum) ǧanūb ġarb taymāʾ. Riyāḍ: wazīrat al-maʿārif, waqālat al-āṯār wa-l-matāḥif, 1999.
[WTay] Winnett, F.V. & Reed, W.L. Ancient Records from North Arabia. with contributions by J.T. Milik and J. Starcky. (Near and Middle East Series, 6). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970.
Al-Mushayrif : Epigraphy and Landscape in the Hinterland of Taymāʾ (ELHT, on OCIANA).
Please forgive typos, tweeting during lunch in btwn things :).
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