Hudhud
Hudhud Logo
𐩠𐩵𐩠𐩵
ID: 5955

Text:

Translations:

1S²rḥʿṯt ʾs²wʿ he of Ḥbb[... ...] ʾqwl of the two tribes of Ṣrwḥ and Ḫwln Ḫḍlm, dedicated to their Lord ʾlmqh Ṯhwn, Lord of ʾwm, the statue in bronze that he had promised to Him in praise because he came back and was safe from overseas where their lord  Krbʾl Wtr Yhnʿm, king of Sabaʾ and ḏu-Raydān and Ḥaḍramawt and Ymnt, had dispatched him, and he dispatched them as a delegation to the land of the Abyssinians and the Aksumites, to the negus, and their Lord ʾlmqh granted them to come in safety and get back in peace; he dispatched with him, as a delegation, ʾḥyqm and Zlns¹, and He granted to His servant to come back in seven days and nights and their return, and they proceeded to Mḫwn in safety;
2they praised their Lord  ʾlmqh that he brought him back in safety and the two  legates of the Abyssinians (or, the Abyssinian delegation) and He retained the wind for seven months on the sea, and they praised ʾlmqh that they found their lord Krbʾl Wtr Yhnʿm, king of Sabaʾ and ḏu-Raydān and Ḥaḍramawt and Ymnt, in safety. May He grant His servant S²rḥʿṯt the protection of his hand and his  tongue and the goodwill and the satisfaction of their lord Krbʾl Wtr Yhnʿm, king of Sabaʾ and ḏu-Raydān and Ḥaḍramawt and Ymnt, and may He grant them crops and harvests from all their lands and their territories in abundant and sound wheat and barley and irrigated crops. By ʾlmqh.

Translation Notes:

1For this interpretation of the phrase k-ʾs¹yw mrʾ-hmw ... ... b-wfym, cf. Drewes 1979: 102, who suggests that the meaning of the verb ʾs¹yw is here "to find". Instead, Ryckmans considered the king as the subject of the sentence and corrected ʾs¹yw into ʾs¹y-hw "leur seigneur Karibʾil ... [l']a envoyé" (Ryckmans 1975: 201). Regarding the phrase ʾty s¹bʿt ymtm b-llt, see the grammatical remarks by Stein 2003 a: 73, fn. 220.
2According to Ryckmans, the "hand" and the "tongue" are the god's action and oracle that protected the dedicant, but the meaning of the sentence is clarified by the other attestations of this formula in an optative context: w-l s²rḥ yd-hw w-ls¹n-hw.

Chronological

Period: D

Physical

Support: Object → Artefact → Base → Of statue with dedicatory inscription
Materials: Stone

Linguistic

Language: Ancient South Arabian → Sabaic → Central Middle Sabaic
Alphabet: Ancient South Arabian
Script Typology: Monumental writing
Textual Typology: Dedicatory text
Writing Techniques: Incision

Spatial

Site: Maḥram Bilqīs, Maʾrib, Yemen
Ancient Name: ʾwm
Type of Site: Religious area with a necropolis
Deposit:
settlement: Ṣanʿāʾ
institution: al-Kuhālī collection
private Collection: false

Similar Epigraphs

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