An Aramaic−Hasaitic bilingual inscription from a monumental tomb at Mleiha, Sharjah, UAE

Abstract

Excavations of a monumental tomb in Area F at Mleiha have revealed a lime-plaster funerary stele with an Aramaic and Hasaitic inscription. The excavation of the tomb was not completed but a preliminary report on the tomb and a discussion of the text is presented. The inscription states that the tomb was built by the deceased's son and mentions the date and his name, family lineage and function in the service of the King of ʿUm an. 1

South Arabian zabūr script in the Gulf: some recent discoveries from Mleiha (Sharjah, UAE)

“…Indeed, a date of c . third century BCE is plausible for the Hasaitic inscriptions from Mleiha on the basis of the date formula in the bilingual tomb inscription (see Overlaet et al., : 136–137). This is basically corroborated by the arguments on Gerrhaean traders in South Arabia around 300 BCE, as mentioned above.…”

“…While there are no parallels for such a defective spelling of the word hqnyt (or sqnyt ) ‘she dedicated’ in Ancient South Arabian sources, this form is strikingly paralleled by the verb bnt ‘she built’ (root BNY ) in the Hasaitic tomb inscription Robin‐Mulayḥa 1/2, discussed by Overlaet et al. (: 135). The proposal given there, assuming a monophthongised pattern */banēt/ for this particular form, could well be fostered by the present verb, which should accordingly be reconstructed */haqnēt/ (instead of /haqnayat/, rendering the regular Sabaic hqnyt ).…”

“…The find spot is only some 300 m east of the monumental tomb in area MLH‐F where the bilingual gravestone was excavated, and close to the two representative buildings (the ‘fort’ and the ‘palace’), which were erected only in the late second century CE, but might indicate the actual heart of the settlement (cf. Jasim, Uerpmann & Uerpmann, : 80–81; Overlaet et al., : 127–129, fig. ).…”

“…The site of Mleiha (al‐Mulayḥa), situated about 55 km east of Dubai in the south‐eastern part of the emirate of Sharjah (aš‐Šāriqa), has yielded comparatively rich epigraphic documentation from the earliest excavations in the 1970s to the present day (Robin, : 79–84; Puech, ; Overlaet, Macdonald & Stein, ). The inscriptions from this location published to date comprise two grave stones with texts in Ancient South Arabian monumental script or musnad (Robin‐Mulayḥa 1 and Wilkinson‐Mulayḥa 1 ), an Aramaic‐Hasaitic bilingual tomb inscription (Overlaet et al., ), a bronze plaque with a nine‐line inscription in Aramaic and the fragment of a second plaque (Puech, : 37–49), and several vessels inscribed with single words or letters in Ancient South Arabian script (ML 86 C m 17, ML 90 L 2459, ML 89 BQ 24, ML 89 BI 81, and ML 89 L 1811). Apart from the Aramaic bronze plaque (on which see note 4), the longer inscriptions from the site are exclusively gravestones, a genre which forms the bulk of epigraphic documentation in the area between Thāj and al‐Qaṭīf in al‐Ḥasā, the core region of the corpus of inscriptions commonly labelled ‘Hasaitic’ (Sima, ; Stein, ) .…”

“…These documents have been dated, mainly based on palaeographical grounds, to the period from the third to the first century BCE, and even later . Only the recently discovered bilingual grave inscription fortunately provides us with a dating formula, which refers most probably to the late third century BCE (Overlaet et al., : 138). This should be borne in mind when evaluating the chronological position of the new inscriptions under consideration here.…”