Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
The stone fragments here published were recovered from the ruins of Shabwa, in the Hadramaut, in 1938 by Major the Honourable R. A. B. Hamilton (now Lord Belhaven and Stenton) and presented to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford in 1952. The finder has described his work at Shabwa in a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society, published in the Geographical Journal, and in his book The Kingdom of Melchior.
page 43 note 1 Vol. 100 (1942), pp. 107 ff.
page 43 note 2 London, 1949, pp. 159–164.
page 43 note 3 Hamilton 2, published by Beeston, A. F. L., “Two Shabwa inscriptions,” Le Muséon, tom. 60 (1947), pp. 53–5 and plate iGoogle Scholar.
page 43 note 4 Geogr. Jnl., 100, pp. 113 ff., and especially p. 116.
page 43 note 5 loc. cit., p. 112.
page 43 note 6 p. 115.
page 43 note 7 Plate facing p. 115.
page 43 note 8 Plate 14.
page 45 note 1 Kingdom of Melchior, p. 163.
page 45 note 2 Geogr. Jnl., p. 115. It may be queried whether the description of the material used for this decoration as “plaster” is quite correct; all the specimens of it which are now in Oxford seem to be executed in a very soft friable siltstone or limestone (see below, pp. 49–50).
page 45 note 3 Kingdom of Melchior, p. 163.
page 45 note 4 See Beeston, , “Two Shabwa Inscriptions,” p. 53 and plate iGoogle Scholar.
page 45 note 5 Geogr. Jnl., p. 123.
page 46 note 1 Altsyrim, figs. 1301–1310.
page 47 note 1 The blue tinting found on several of these pieces is presumably indigo, a pigment specially popular among the inhabitants of Hadramaut to the present day.
page 47 note 2 op. cit., figs. 1297, 1299, 1300.
page 50 note 1 von Wissmann, H. and Höfner, M., “Beiträge zur historischen Geographic des vorislamischen Südarabien” (Wiesbaden, 1953), plate xiiGoogle Scholar.
page 50 note 2 Von Wissmann and Höfner, op. oit., plate x, fig. 16.
page 51 note 1 Hist, nat., xii, 63.
page 52 note 1 See Ryckmans, J., L'institution monarchique en Arabie méridionale avant l'Islam (Louvain, 1951), p. 56Google Scholar.
page 52 note 2 Ryckmans, G., Les noms propres sudsimitigues (Louvain, 1934), tom, i, p. 304Google Scholar.
page 52 note 3 Institution monarchique, p. 178.
page 52 note 4 Vetus Testamentum, ii, p. 287.
page 52 note 5 In a personal communication to me.
page 53 note 1 Rhodokanakis, Studien, ii (SAWW 185/3, 1917), p. 23.
page 53 note 2 Qāmūs: nazaḥa ba'uda… wal-nazīḥu l-ba'idu… wa nuziḥa bihi ba'uda'an diyārihi gaibatan ba'īdatan.
page 56 note 1 Altsabäische Texte, i (SAWW 206/2, 1927), p. 69, note 6.
page 56 note 2 See B.A.S.O.R., 119, p. 14.
page 56 note 3 Le Muséon, tom. 60.
page 57 note 1 Grohmann, A., Göttersymbole und Symboltiere auf südarabischen Denkmälern (Wien, 1914), pp. 6 sqqGoogle Scholar.
page 58 note 1 The Corpus rendering here is mistaken, being based on the idea that tḥrb means “war”; but tḥrh is a cult-term, as was rightly seen by Mordtmann, and Mittwoch, , Sabäische Inschriften (Hamburg, 1931), p. 223Google Scholar.
page 58 note 2 See Beeston, A. F. L., “Notes on old-South-Arabian lexicography, iv,” Le Muséon, tom. 65, p. 145Google Scholar.
page 59 note 1 In RES 3610, 9, Lidzbarsky, (Ephemeris für semitische Epigraphik, 3, p. 213)Google Scholar took 'šft as a plural noun, which could perhaps imply a radical t (though not necessarily: it could also be, e.g. a plural of measure' af'ilat from a geminate root); Ryckmans, G., on the other hand (Noms propres, i, 272), following Jaussen and Savignac, interprets it as a proper nameGoogle Scholar.
page 59 note 2 Cf. CIH. 74, 16, ḥg/'lm/bhw/l'lm “according to the sign wherewith he was instructed”; ibid., 3, ḥgn/wqhhmw “as He commanded them”.
page 60 note 1 Altsabāische Texte, ii (WZKM., 39), p. 203, note 14.
page 61 note 1 e.g. RES 461, 3884 bis. Possibly we should also class Jamme 348 as an “Ausanian” type, since along with s-forms it shows several Sabseisms, to which I have called attention in my review of Jamme's, work (Le Muséon, tom. 66, p. 178)Google Scholar.