Dadanitic b-rʾy as referring to a local calendar?

Abstract

This article will discuss the dating formula in the Dadanitic inscriptions. So far, some of these have been interpreted to refer not only to the reign of the local king (mlk lḥyn), but also to another political official called rʾy. The article will discuss the merit of this interpretation based on both the questionable etymology of the term rʾy and the problematic interpretation of the terms following this word as personal names. Instead, a new interpretation of this formula as a reference to a local calendar will be explored in light of the occurrence of a similar word rʾy in Safaitic dating formula, and comparison to other ancient methods of time reckoning in the region.

1. Introduction

Dadanitic is the name of the script used to carve inscriptions attested in and around the ancient oasis of Dadān, modern-day al-ʿUlā, in the north-west of the Arabian Peninsula.¹ Just under 2,000 Dadanitic inscriptions are known so far, about 1,500 of which are informal graffiti.² It is generally assumed that these inscriptions were carved between the sixth and first centuries bce. The exact dating of the inscriptions is problematic, however, and mostly based on outside references to Dadān (see Rohmer and Charloux 2015 for the most recent overview and discussion of the evidence for dating the inscriptions). The dating of the inscriptions is particularly problematic due to their lack of references to known historical dates and events. Some do carry dates, but these refer only to the regnal years of the local kings. These dates can be further specified with a term rʾy, which is generally interpreted as a reference to a local political official.

This paper will discuss this dating formula used in the Dadanitic inscriptions. After a section in which the form and occurrence of the formula is introduced, the current interpretation will be outlined together with some fundamental questions concerning different aspects of this reading. In section 3, the formula will be discussed in relation to similar formulae in Minaic and Sabaic inscriptions. In section 4, a new interpretation of the formula as a local calendar will be proposed. At the end of the article an appendix will present a more detailed discussion of each of the lexical items following the phrase b-rʾy.

1.1. The formula

Several of the Dadanitic inscriptions are dated to a specific year. In these cases the year is mentioned, followed by a number and the name of the king whose regnal years are being counted:

s¹nt X Personal Name (PN) bn PN mlk lḥyn

“year X PN son of PN king of Liḥyān”(e.g. AH 064)

A more elaborate dating formula is also attested:

s¹nt X b-rʾy Y PN bn PN mlk lḥyn

“year X during the rʾy of Y; PN son of PN king of Liḥyān” (e.g. AH 239)

The formula can be further specified by adding a number of days and the preposition qbl, which replace the preposition b- “at”:³

s¹nt X Y ʾym qbl rʾy Z PN bn PN mlk lḥyn

“year X; Y days before the rʾy of Z; PN son of PN king of Liḥyān” (JSLih 068 and AH 244)

Variations of the b-rʾy formula are found in AH 197 and in JSLih 070.⁴ In both these inscriptions we find another preposition: ḫlf “after”. In AH 197 this preposition is followed not by rʾy, but by the form ṭʿn. The word following ṭʿn is broken off, but since the rest of the phrase follows the rʾy formula closely, it is fairly certain this is a variation of the same phrase. It is interesting to note that the preposition ḫlf is never attested in combination with the word rʾy; instead we find it once before ṭʿn and once in what seems to be a shortened, or shorter, dating formula.

AH 197

s¹nt/ʿs²r/w ṯlṯ/13/ymn/ḫlf/ṭʿn/ḏ----l{ʿ}{b}

“year thirteen 13 two days following ṭʿn ḏ…”.

JSLih 070 seems to contain a shortened form of the formula, in which rʾy/ṭʿn and the name of the king are omitted. The form fḍg is not attested following rʾy or ṭʿn so far, although it seems to occur once as a patronymic in AH 251. This may indicate that this is not a direct equivalent to the rʾy and ṭʿn formula.

JSLih 070

s¹nt/ʿs²r//n/wts¹ʿ/ ʿs²rʾym//ḫlf/fḍg

“year twenty nine; ten days following fḍg”

1.2. The function of dating

In total there are 43 inscriptions that are dated either to the year of inscribing, or to the year and rʾy. Almost half of them (20) contain the b-rʾy elaboration. Most of the inscriptions containing a date are more elaborate, with a formal purpose that distinguishes them from graffiti based on their content. Only six of the 43 dated inscriptions can be identified as graffiti (see Table 1).

Table 1. Number of attestations of each dating formula per genre

It is not surprising that formal inscriptions are more likely to contain a date, to support their legal or commemorative function. While some genres of inscription seem to have preferred a specific dating formula, the dating by year and dating by rʾy and year are relatively evenly distributed across the different genres. The most striking difference seems to be that between dedicatory inscriptions and ẓll inscriptions. The ẓll inscriptions commemorate a local ritual (h-ẓll) performed for the local deity of the oasis, ḏġbt. In terms of formula, they are similar to the dedicatory inscriptions. Currently no convincing interpretation of what the ritual entails is available.⁵ While in dedicatory inscriptions, the preferred dating formula was the elaborate formula containing the specification by rʾy, the preferred form for the ẓll inscriptions seems to have been the shorter date by the year of the king. This may indicate that while specific dedications were tied to specific moments in the year, or their value was dependent on when the ritual was performed exactly,⁶ the ẓll inscriptions were more independent of the specific moment of their performance. This is further supported by the mentioning of certain seasonal crops in some ẓll inscriptions (e.g. U 058 and U 079bis mention dṯʾ “crops of the season of the later rains”⁷). While some inscriptions mention specific seasonal crops, there are also attestations of seasonal crops from different seasons mentioned in one inscription (AH 18 mentions both dṯʾ “crops of the season of the later rains” and ḫrf “crops of the season of the first rains”⁸). Therefore, it seems that the writing of the ẓll inscriptions did not always occur at the same time as the harvests referred to. The lack of more specific time references could also mean that the ẓll ritual was always performed at the same time of the year, making additional specification superfluous.⁹ Note that both ẓll and dedicatory inscriptions are attested with both formulae.

1.3. Current interpretation

The dating formula containing b-rʾy is generally translated as “in year X during the reign/government of PN; of PN son of PN king of Dadān” (e.g. Caskel 1954: 88–9; Farès-Drappeau 2005: 122). The phrase b-rʾy is taken to refer to the reign of a political official (Farès-Drappeau 2005: 122) or to that of the king, with the term directly following b-rʾy as an epithet of the king (Caskel 1954: 89).

1.3.1. b-s¹mwy as epiphaneia

Winnett even suggest that b-s¹mwy in JSLih 054 and JSLih 077 is a variation of the same phrase. He argues that b-s¹mwy is used in an attempt to express the Hellenistic conception epiphaneia: “The word used, for instance, of the accession of the divine Caligula (37–41 ad)”. He concludes that “the s¹mwy of the king must mean something like his ‘elevation to heavenly status’” i.e. “his deification at his accession’”. He saw b-rʾy as a parallel construction, but translated rʾy simply as “oversight, reign” (Winnett and Reed 1970: 126). It is difficult to connect the two expressions, however; bs¹mwy occurs in JSLih 054, following the blessing formula and just before the name of the king, but in damaged context.

JSLih 054 (lines 4–5)

f rḍ-hm/w ----

bs¹mwy/tlmy/bn ----

“and may he please them and --- bs¹mwy tlmy son of”

It is difficult to tell how much is missing between the blessing formula and bs¹mwy. Since ḏʾbs¹mwy occurs in two other inscriptions, following b-rʾy, bs¹mwy is probably merely the end of this phrase. The other occurrence of b-s¹mwy that Winnett refers to (JSLih 077) is also heavily damaged. It cannot be found on the photograph available of the inscription today and is not part of the most recent readings of the inscription (OCIANA and Farès-Drappeau 2005: 169). Therefore, a connection between the two, and certainly an interpretation of b-s¹mwy as epiphaneia seems unlikely.

1.4. A Minaic parallel?

Besides the Dadanitic inscriptions that were found at the oasis of ancient Dadān, a corpus of about 60 monumental Minaic inscriptions have been found there as well. These were probably inscribed there when the Minaeans, whose homeland was in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, established a trading outpost at the oasis. This trading post is considered contemporary with the Lihyanite kingdom referred to in the Dadanitic inscriptions (Winnett and Reed 1970: 117–8).¹⁰ There are several inscriptions that attest to the participation of Minaeans in Dadanitic local rituals (JSLih 049 and AHUD 1) and to the presence of people with some knowledge of both scripts (e.g. JSLih 220). There is even a Minaic legal inscription at Dadān that, despite being heavily damaged, clearly discusses the status of children from a union between a Minaean woman and a Dadānite man.¹¹ These inscriptions show that the two groups interacted with each other at the oasis.

Several of the Minaic inscriptions contain a dating formula in which the year is given both in reference to the king, and to a kabīr who was probably a local ruler or official. If the phrase b-rʾy should indeed be interpreted as a reference to a political official, this phrase could be interpreted as a parallel to the Minaic dating formula. Examples of this dating formula can be found in the DASI corpus 5;¹² it goes roughly:

b-ywmh PN PN mlk mʿnm b-kbr PN (PN)

“during the days of PN PN king of Maʿīn during the kabirate of PN (PN)”

The formula can be elaborated by adding a specific month before the mention of the kabirate. Whenever this is the case, the phrase ḏ-kbrh is used rather than b-kbr (see M 358 = RES 3697 and M316 = RES 3341). This seems to confirm that kbr is a further specification of the year and not a reference to a specific part of the year.

These Minaic inscriptions at Dadān show us that dating by both a king and another political official is not impossible despite the seeming redundancy, and that this practice was likely known in Dadanitic society. It has to be borne in mind, however, that the political situation of the Liḥyanite kingdom at the oasis of Dadān was very different from that of the Minaic outpost there. For the Minaeans in Dadān, it would presumably make more sense to date by both the king and the kbr, as they were outside the Minaic kingdom proper. This would probably give the kbr more prominence in their day-to-day lives than the remote king and seems to be reflected in the different dating practices in Central Minaic as opposed to the inscriptions at Dadān. While the Central Minaic inscriptions from inside the Minaic kingdom are also dated by kabīrs, these formulae are different. They often concern the kabirate of the inscriber, who erected the inscription during his own kabirate (e.g. al-Ḥarāshif 3; al-Jawf 04.28; M11). The inscriptions that are dated by the kabirate of someone other than the inscriber never seem to refer to the king in the same dating formula (e.g. M 179; M 28).

2. rʾy as a political office

2.1. The etymology of rʾy

Besides the possible Minaic parallel, the translation “during the reign of” seems to be further motivated by linking the root rʾy, which has as its basic meaning “to see”, to the notion of ruling, probably inspired by the use of “to oversee” in English and German. There are several issues surrounding this interpretation, however, which merit discussion. Even though “oversee” and “ruling” seem to be closely connected in most European languages (e.g. German sehen and übersehen; English “to see” and “to oversee”),¹³ this construction is not productive in Semitic languages. The meaning of rʾy in Semitic languages is related to “seeing” or “having an opinion” (ultimately also related to seeing). Although its usage with the meaning “opinion, judgement” could have been extended to have something to do with ruling or judging, it is not primarily used to express such concepts.

In Sabaic, the root can be used to mean “oracular vision” (Beeston et al. 1982: 113) and by extension also the person who does the “seeing”, like a priest or a soothsayer.¹⁴ In this sense it could be argued that rʾy refers not to a political, but to a religious, official. In Sabaic and Qatabanic there are inscriptions that contain the phrase “ywm rs²w theonym (DN)”.¹⁵ While a rs²w is a type of priest, these phrases indicate a period mostly relevant to the inscriber's name instead of an abstract year and they are translated as “the days in which he was priest of DN” (CSAI). There are several terms for priests or religious officials attested in the Dadanitic context ʾfkl (e.g. JSLih 055; JaL 010 a); s¹lḥ (e.g. U 059; U 044), but there are no attestations of rʾy in a context where it clearly refers to a person or profession.

2.2. Personal names

A further issue that has been recognized,¹⁶ but never sufficiently explored, is the obscurity of the etymologies of the forms following b-rʾy. None of these are attested as personal names in the Dadanitic corpus, and none of them have clear etymologies allowing them to be interpreted as epithets.¹⁷

So even though the Minaic dating by a local kbr shows that it is not impossible to have a seemingly redundant specification of the year by both a king and a local official, there is no clear reason, based on the etymology of b-rʾy, to translate this phrase as “during the government of …”. On top of this, none of the forms following b-rʾy can be readily interpreted as either personal names or epithets, further complicating the interpretation that rʾy referred to the office of a person (see Table 2).

Table 2. Schematic overview of the formula “s¹nt X b-rʾy Y name-of-a-king mlk lḥyn” and its attestations

3. The formula revisited

3.1. Syntax and form

Previous investigations into the formula have focused mostly on the lexical items it contains and their cultural significance, however, the grammatical structure seems slightly awkward as well, and forms a good starting point for a comparison to other dating formulae in the Arabian inscriptions. In Dadanitic, s¹nt is always followed by a cardinal number “in year 2/3/etc. (of) king X”, even though one might expect an ordinal one: *“in the 2^nd/3^rd etc. year of the reign of king X”. It is not uncommon to count the units of a dating formula with cardinal numbers, however: compare, for example, Sabaic b-ywm ṯmnym (C 601/18) or Syriac yawmo da-ṯloṯo (John 11.1) (Beeston 1956: 4). However, both these constructions differ from the Dadanitic form. In the Sabaic formula ywm stands in construct with the numeral, while in Syriac the numeral is introduced with a relative pronoun. In Sabaic it is formally apparent that the form ywm is in construct state from the lack of mimation (Stein 2011: 1051). In Dadanitic, we would expect the numeral to have a definite article if the two were in construct. Moreover, if s¹nt indicates the year of the king, one would expect the year to stand in construct with the king, whereas in the Dadanitic inscriptions, “b-rʾy X” can appear in between. The key to interpreting both these issues seems to be interpreting the phrase as a formula “year/specific part of the year/era”. Note that the Dadanitic formula is also different from the Sabaic system which is “day/month/year”.¹⁹

Neither is the form of the formula the same as Minaic, in which the year seems to stand in construct with the king, followed by the specification of the month and the kbr. Further comparison of the two formulae seems to confirm that Dadanitic rʾy is not the equivalent of Minaic kbr. As mentioned above, there are etymological problems in interpreting b-rʾy as “during the reign” as a parallel to Minaic b-kbr “during the kabirate”, and while the dating by a kbr can be specified by adding a month, the only attested specification of the Dadanitic rʾy formula is by a few days before or after rʾy or ṭʿn X. This suggests that while Minaic kbr refers to a longer period of time (probably a year), Dadanitic rʾy and ṭʿn refer to a specific moment instead.

3.2. rʾy and ṭʿn in other corpora

Even though it is difficult to connect any of the forms following rʾy to other known calendar systems, both rʾy and ṭʿn are attested in Safaitic inscriptions. Al-Jallad (2014: 217) demonstrated that rʾy refers to the heliacal or acronical rising²⁰ of the constellations of the zodiac. He recognized the use of the signs of the zodiac in the Safaitic inscriptions after linking two inscriptions that included an identical list of three unknown elements that were read as place names (C 4985; KRS 169), to an inscription that listed the three seasons “winter” s²ty, “the season of the later rains” dṯʾ, and the “dry season” qyẓ (SIJ 1008) (Al-Jallad 2014: 214–6), suggesting that the terms were better understood as some indication of the seasons, rather than place names. He then identified the same three elements independently in inscriptions, sometimes together with the phrases b-rʾy or b-ks¹ʾ, which led to the identification of nine other forms that were used in similar formulae.

C 1338

l ḥml b{n} [n] s²bt bn ktm w r [ʿ] y h- ʾbl b- rʾy ḏkr bq{l}

“By ḥml {son of} {ns²bt} son of ktm and he [pastured] the camels during the rising of Aquarius on fresh {herbage}.”²¹

C 523

l ʾlh bn bʾẖh bn trb w wrd h- nmrt b-ks¹ʾ mlḥ

“By ʾlh son of bʾẖh son of trb and he went to water at Namārah during the cosmical setting/full moon of Aquarius.”²²

Al-Jallad managed to link all twelve attested forms to the different signs of the zodiac, based on both their etymology and the activities and seasonal circumstances described in the inscriptions, which all correspond to the moment of the rising of the signs mentioned (Al-Jallad 2014: 228). In part II of this article (Al-Jallad 2016), he examines the cultural context of the dating formula in more depth. In this article Al-Jallad adds that the Safaitic system was most likely a mixed system, in which the constellations of the zodiac were integrated into a local practical star calendar or parapegma ²³ (Al-Jallad 2016: 89–90), similar to the anwāʾ system discussed by Varisco (1991: 23).

Al-Jallad proposes connecting rʾy to a term used by Babylonian astronomers igi = ittanmar “to rise heliacally”, from amārum “to see”. This forms a nice parallel to rʾy in Safaitic, which simply came to mean “the rising (of an asterism)” (Al-Jallad 2014: 217). In Part I of his article Al-Jallad interpreted the form ks¹ʾ as a reference “to the full moon when it occupies the constellation/sign with which it is in construct”, which can be linked to Hebrew kīsê and Syriac kesā both meaning “full moon” (HALOT #4329) (Al-Jallad 2014: 217). After pointing to the likely relation between the “Arabian zodiac” and an older system of local marker stars, however, he also discusses the possibility of regarding ks¹ʾ as a reference to the setting of an asterism. Unfortunately there is no direct evidence in the Safaitic inscriptions to decide what ks¹ʾ referred to exactly.²⁴ Making a distinction between the two is especially complicated as the setting of an asterism coincides with the period in which the full moon occupies that constellation (Al-Jallad 2016: 94). There is one attestation of a Safaitic inscription in which ks¹ʾ seems to be substituted with ṭʿn.²⁵

The form ṭʿn also occurs once in Minaic in a dating formula:

M 293A (lines 7–8)

b-ṣltn bn bṯ l-gzz ḏn ftḥn ywmnt ftḥn w-mṯbtn s¹dṯ ṭʿn ḏ-ʾṯrt ḏ-kbrh hwfʾl ḏ-wkl qdmn kbr-s¹

“In the legal appeal within what has been proclaimed for the enforcement of this judicial decision: date of the judicial decision and promulgation is on the sixth of the last decade of ḏ-ʾṯrt during the kabirate of hwfʾl ḏ-wkl his first kabirate.”²⁶

The interpretation of ṭʿn as “last decade of the month” in reference to the last ten days of the month was first proposed by Beeston (1956: 7). He connects ṭʿn to CAr. ṭaʿana fī s-sinn “he was advanced in age”. The basic meaning of the root is “to pierce, enter or penetrate”, however, which is not directly related to the end of something. If we try to relate this form to the phases of the moon or the stars, on the other hand, whether something “enters” or “exits” all depends on perspective: does the moon or an asterism exit the phase in which we can see it, or does it enter the phase of its cycle in which it is obscured from us? In this way the etymology of ṭʿn cannot solve the issue. The strongest argument for interpreting ṭʿn as the name of a decade or phase of the month is its position in the dating formula. Compare for example, the Sabaic formula in which the days of the month were divided into three “decades” (Beeston 1956: 4–8; Stein 2005).

Ja 653 (lines 9–10)

ywm ʾrbʿm ḏ-fqhy wrḫ ḏ-mlyt

“The fourth day of the second decade of the month ḏ-mlyt.” ²⁷

It should be noted, however, that Beeston (1956) does not mention any other Minaic terms for the decades of the month, and that the terms used in Sabaic to indicate them (frʿ, fqhy, and ʾgby) are not attested in Manaic²⁸ in the environment of a dating formula (DASI). Given the isolated attestation of ṭʿn in Minaic, it is difficult to be certain of its exact meaning.

To sum up, b-rʾy does not seem to be a reference to a local official. The etymology of the term and its usage, which is restricted to dating formulae, do not support such an interpretation. Moreover, none of the forms following the phrase b-rʾy are elsewhere attested as personal names or epithets in the Dadanitic corpus. Based on the occurrence of the term rʾy in Safaitic and ṭʿn in Safaitic and Minaic, it seems plausible that the Dadanitic dating formula was based on a system using the observable rising and setting of celestial bodies to keep track of time.

4. A Dadanitic calendar

The fact that years are counted suggests that there was a definite and known beginning and ending of the year, which probably means that a relatively accurate system of keeping time was in place. Other cultures that do not keep time by a calendar usually date to local events. For example the Safaitic inscriptions use dating formulae such as the following to refer to a specific year.²⁹

ZeWa 1

… s¹nt ṭrq mk mlk nbṭ ṯlṯn mʾt qtl ʾl rm …

“The year mk king of the Nabataeans smote thirty cavalry units, warriors of the Romans.”

WH3792.1

… s¹nt ḥrb g{s²}m ʾl ṯmd

“The year {gs²m} and the people of Ṯamūd made war.”³⁰

In addition to that, the inscriptions that mention “X days before rʾy Y” (JSLih 068 and possibly AH 244) suggest that the occurrence of rʾy (and possibly ṭʿn) were predictable. Despite the apparent predictability of rʾy, there are no attestations of days counted within rʾy or ṭʿn. This suggests that b-rʾy refers to a specific moment or day, instead of a longer period of time, such as a month.³¹ If we are looking at an actual calendar, which would have kept track of all the days of the year, one would expect to find at least occasional references to specific days of the month (as in Sabaic for example (Beeston 1956; Stein 2005)). Alternatively this could mean that there was a system of counting days in place, which may be compared to the lunar interpretation³² of the Roman ides ³³ for example. This theory proposes that the days of the month were counted as the number of days before the nona (the ninth day before the ides), the ides (the full moon), and the next kalenda (the first day of the next month).³⁴ In this way all the days of the month could be accounted for while using a specific moment as an anchor from which to count the days.

Taken together, this suggests that the time reckoning system attested in the Dadanitic inscriptions was a systemized (hence predictable) mode of time reckoning, probably based on the movement of celestial bodies. This could mean that it was a ritual calendar for which not all days of the year would have been relevant, which would explain why most inscriptions only refer to the moment of rʾy or ṭʿn. Unfortunately, there are several obstacles that prevent an exact identification of the system. As discussed above, the etymologies of the terms following b-rʾy and b-ṭʾn are unclear. This means they cannot be directly linked to any known system of time reckoning, like the anwāʿ system, or the constellations of the zodiac.

On top of this, there are no Dadanitic inscriptions in which reference to seasonal conditions or activities is made, making it difficult to test any proposed correlation between any of the “dates” and actual periods of the year. As mentioned above, some ẓll inscriptions mention seasonal crops (e.g. U 058 and U 079bis mention dṯʾ “crops of the season of the later rains”), but there are also attestations of seasonal crops from different seasons mentioned within the same inscription (AH 018 mentions both dṯʾ “crops of the season of the later rains” and ḫrf “crops of the season of the first rains”). Therefore, it is impossible to link the moment of the writing of an inscription directly to the crops or season mentioned in it. Moreover, there is only one inscription which mentions a ẓll and has a relevant dating formula, but it does not mention any specific crops (AH 244).

Since the etymologies of the forms in the dating formula have not proven to be useful in determining what kind of calendar is attested in the Dadanitic inscriptions, the following section will focus on different modes of timekeeping in the region, to help shed some light on the possible system behind the Dadanitic formula.

4.1. Lunar calendar

Most societies in the ancient Near East had a luni-solar calendar. They kept track of the months by watching the phases of the moon, but used intercalation to keep the year in sync with the seasons. The Babylonian calendars were already luni-solar (Stern 2012: 71). Later we find similar systems in ancient Greece (Stern 2012: 25)³⁵ and the Levant (Stern 2012: 71). If the Dadanitic were a lunar calendar as well,³⁶ it would seem likely that one of the two attested terms referred to the new moon, and one to the full moon, as they are the most recognizable phases of the lunar cycle. On top of this, the full moon had special significance in many religious activities in the region. Several Jewish festivals, such as Passover (van der Toorn, Becking, and van der Hors 1999: 590) and Sukkoth are celebrated during the full moon (Ulfgard 1998: 194); the Phoenicians celebrated new and full moon festivals (Wright 2007: 177);³⁷ similar festivals were also customary in Ptolemaic Egypt (Stern 2012: 144) and generally across Mesopotamia. This would make a practical or cultic calendar, indicating two moments of a cycle, with no reference to the full moon unlikely.

In this case rʾy could refer to the appearance of the new moon, in parallel to its usage in Safaitic (the rising or appearance of an asterism) (Al-Jallad 2014, 2016) and its etymology (“to appear” from “to see”). Based on its etymology, ṭʿn could then be argued to work with a meaning “end of the month/lunar cycle” or “last decade of the month” as proposed by Beeston (1956: 7), based on its meaning “to enter (the phase in which it is invisible)”. This meaning is a little awkward however. If ṭʿn indicated the new moon, the etymology would work better as the period in which the visible moon will start to enter the sky again, but in that case it would no longer align with its proposed Minaic usage indicating the last decade of the month.

Based on its occurrence in Safaitic, ṭʿn seems to be used as an alternative form of more common ks¹ʾ, which can either be connected to the full moon, or the setting of an asterism (Al-Jallad 2016: 94). It is unclear how the root ṭʿn would be related to the full moon etymologically. In Aramaic, ṭʿn can mean “to lift up and carry a burden, to become pregnant; to put a burden on something/someone”.³⁸ Such a meaning would go well with an interpretation of ṭʿn as referring to the full moon. However, Aramaic ṭʿn comes from *ẓʿn (compare e.g. CAr. ẓaʿūn “a camel used for work and for bearing burdens” (Lane: 1911c)).

In Dadanitic *ẓ is quite often written with ṭ, however, suggesting that the two merged in (some forms of the) spoken language (see Kootstra 2018b for a full discussion).³⁹ While this could explain how *ẓʿn ended up in Dadanitic as ṭʿn, this sound change does not seem to have operated in Safaitic and Minaic. However, if ṭʿn originally referred to the cosmical or acronical setting of a constellation this would have coincided with its full moon. The fact that these two events occur at the same time, could explain how a possible original meaning of “to set”, referring to an asterism, came to refer to the full moon being in a certain asterism, either through development of the system itself or when it was adopted from neighbouring societies.

Combining the attested days before rʾy and following ṭʿn into a lunar cycle with the full and new moon indicated is somewhat problematic, however, as the days mentioned in the inscriptions overlap in the different phases they are supposed to indicate. In other words, 13 days following ṭʿn would, in such a system, be the same as one day before rʾy (see Table 3). So unless there were different terms to refer to the same period of the month, this system does not work with the attested forms.

Table 3. Phases of the moon and the attested days in the inscriptions with rʾy (light grey) and ṭʿn (dark grey) indicating the new and full moon

For a lunar system to work with the days specified in the inscriptions, we need one of the two terms to refer to the first or last quarter. Even though this would create a system that does not overlap and could potentially name all days of the month, it is unclear why a system would develop that referred to the days of the lunar cycle only through either the full or the new moon and one of the two quarters (see Table 4).

Table 4. Phases of the moon and the attested days in the inscriptions with rʾy (light grey) and ṭʿn (dark grey) indicating the new or full moon and one of the quarters

If the Dadanitic system was indeed a lunar calendar, possibly solely noting certain phases of the moon that were of cultic significance, the forms following b-rʾy and b-ṭʿn should be interpreted as local month names. Possibly similar to the month names in Sabaic, which derive from different sources: some are connected to festivals or deities, such as ḏ-nswr and ḏ-ṣrr (after the ritual indicated by the verb hṣr), while others relate to seasonal or agricultural activities ḏ-dṯʾ “the month of spring”, and several of which the origin remains obscure (Beeston 1956: 15–7).⁴⁰ This could explain why not all the terms following rʾy are readily interpretable in Dadanitic either. It is clear, however, that trying to fit the Dadanitic dating formula to a lunar system requires some special pleading.

4.2. Zodiac

Since the basic terms of the Dadanitic formula, rʾy and ṭʿn also occur in the Safaitic zodiac, one might expect to find the underlying system to be similar as well. However, as Al-Jallad (2014) demonstrated, each of the Safaitic forms can confidently be connected to one of the well-known constellations of the zodiac.⁴¹ The Dadanitic forms, on the other hand, cannot be fitted into this system. Even though one might argue for a connection between some of the Dadanitic forms and the signs of the zodiac,⁴² it seems impossible to connect all of the attested forms to the zodiac systematically.

In the second part of his article, Al-Jallad argues that the Safaitic zodiac is probably a hybrid system, using newly adopted zodiac signs in the framework of an older practical star calendar (Al-Jallad 2016: 88). Practical star calendars in which a certain seasonal or agricultural event would be connected to the rising or setting of a star or asterism were widely used from Mesopotamia to the south of the Arabian Peninsula. Varisco (1993) found several of these ancient local star calendars which have later been moulded into the lunar mansions system (Varisco 1993: 121–3) and a 365-day solar calendar (Varisco 1993: 126) by later Islamic scholars. Similar parapegmata are known, for example, from ancient Greece, in which astronomical events would be listed in connection to certain meteorological events (Stern 2012: 57–8). These types of star calendars were a practical tool for people who were dependent on the weather and the seasons, without requiring a complex understanding of the movement of the celestial bodies, since simple repeated observation would be enough to be able to link the movement of the stars to local seasonal weather patterns (Varisco 1993: 121).

Given the attestation of both rʾy and ṭʿn in the Safaitic inscriptions, and even the attestation of ṭʿn in Minaic, these probably all stem from one system of time reckoning. Given their usage in Safaitic, the origin of this system was most likely a practical star calendar. Assuming a practical calendar to be at the base of this is further supported by the widespread usage of such systems in the ancient Near East. The reason we probably only see remnants of this system, sometimes adapted to other systems as in Yemen (Varisco 1993) and the Safaitic inscriptions (Al-Jallad 2016), is probably due to the fact that they are not very practical for administrative purposes, due to their lack of specificity and uniformity. The fact that there seems to have been a close connection between the agricultural cycle and religious practice at Dadān may have contributed to the adoption of this, in essence, practical calendar for religious purposes, which led to it being written down – contrary to the fate of most similar calendars.⁴³

If the Dadanitic dating formula represented a star calendar, rʾy probably referred to the rising of a star or asterism, while ṭʿn referred to its setting. Assuming that the Dadanitic system reflects a local parapegma could also explain why the forms following rʾy and ṭʿn do not seem to correspond to any of the known time-keeping systems in the region, as they would represent the local names of locally relevant stars or asterisms. Moreover, assuming a practical calendar could help explain why we do not encounter a “full” calendar at Dadān, counting all the days of the year, since a practical calendar would only need to indicate the start of a general period of agricultural significance, or in a cultic guise it would only need to indicate the specific festival days of the year.

5. Conclusion

Based on the incompatibility of the forms following rʾy with personal names, the difficult connection between the root rʾy and the meaning “ruling”, and the occurrence of an alternative form of the formula including ṭʿn, it seems clear that the Dadanitic dating formula did not refer to a local ruler. The recent recognition that rʾy and ṭʿn in Safaitic refer to a calendar based on the movement of the stars (Al-Jallad 2014; 2016) and the use of ṭʿn in Minaic in similar time reckoning context seems to suggest that we are looking at an ancient dating system that lies at the basis of all three. After comparing the Dadanitic inscriptions to comparable dating systems in the ancient Near East, it seems that the Dadanitic inscriptions most likely reflect either a lunar calendar or a local star calendar. Given the strong parallels between the terms used in the Safaitic inscriptions and the Dadanitic ones, and the fact that until now only two phases of the moon would be accounted for in the Dadanitic inscriptions, there seem to be fewer problems with identifying the Dadanitic dating formula as a calendar based on the rising and setting of locally relevant asterisms. The fact that an identification of the terms following rʾy and ṭʿn with known month or star names remains problematic may be understood if we consider the Dadanitic dating system as a practical star calendar based on the local names of locally relevant stars.