East and West in Sabæan Inscriptions

Extract

Besides the common-Semitic forms mšrq and m'rb for east and west, we find in certain Sabæan inscriptions the terms “towards Yatîl” and “towards Qatabân” employed. Rhodokanakis followed by Höfner assumes the former of these terms to imply “eastwards” and the latter “westwards”. The argument leading to this seems to be roughly as follows: (1) in the Minæan inscription EES 2830, 1–2, ḍr' is opposed to mṣbḥ, and since the latter plainly means the east ḍr' must mean west and is to be compared with the Arabic expression “the sun was near setting”; (2) in the Minæan RES 2774, 5, bn śnn ḍr' is opposed to bn śnn ytl, which therefore must mean eastwards (3) in the Sabæan CIH 570, 5, “towards Yatîl” is a correlative of “towards Qatabân”, which therefore means westwards; (4) this is confirmed by Gl. 739, 3, where “towards Qatabân” is opposed to “towards the east” (mšrqn) in the parallel text RES 852.