Tayma Aramaic or early Nabataean?

This month, I spent two weeks teaching an introduction to Nabataean epigraphy at a small winter school set near the Nabataean ruins of Hegra, in northwest Arabia. One of my final tasks as part of the AlUla Inscriptions Corpus Analysis Project at Ghent University, this was an extraordinary experience and one that will feature in a number of blog posts to come. In this one, I want to focus on a question that came up in preparing my final class, on early Nabataean, centering on some fascinating Aramaic material from the next oasis over: Tayma.

Under the editorship of Michael C.A. Macdonald and (for vol. 3) Muhammad al-Najem, a range of inscriptions from Tayma were published Open Access in 2023 and 2025. These include inscriptions in Akkadian, Taymanitic (the local, West Semitic language written in an Ancient North Arabian script), Imperial Aramaic,1 Nabataean Aramaic, and, in Macdonald’s view, a unique, local variety: Tayma Aramaic. The arguments for treating Tayma Aramaic as a distinct variety are not made explicit,2 but I think the reasoning is as follows:

By way of illustration, here is a gorgeous triply-inscribed funerary stela (or three or four separate stelae, I guess) in Imperial Aramaic, Tayma Aramaic, and Nabataean (from vol. 2: 100):

Macdonald’s commentary on the second inscription (vol. 2: 103) contains this very quoteworthy passage:

The importance of this inscription is its physical and chronological position between the Imperial Aramaic text (TA 10277 A) and the Nabataean one (TA 10277 C), a position which is reflected in the variety of its letter forms. The first two letters have their Imperial Aramaic forms, but the following letters are in a mixture of post-Imperial Aramaic shapes. Thus if one compares the first and last letters (h) one can see that the first is angular and the last is more rounded. More dramatically, comparison of the second letter with the eighth (y) shows that the stance of the letter has been reversed and that the short horizontal line half-way down the stem has disappeared. Comparison of the fifth letter (š) with the third letter in inscriptions A and C shows what looks like a steady, if purely theoretical, progression: from the Imperial Aramaic form (in A) to one local development (in B), and another (later) local development, the Nabataean form (in C). However, an indication of the complications of palaeographical ‘history’, is provided by the fourth letter (p) in TA 10277B. This letter, in a text which clearly predates the introduction of Nabataean into Taymāʾ, has a similar form to that at the end of line 2 in the Nabataean inscription of AD 203 found at Taymāʾ, see TM.N.004 in Macdonald – Al-Najem 2021 [and now also in vol. 3, BDS]. By contrast the form in the Nabataean inscription here (C, which is 188 years earlier than TM.N.004) is much closer in shape to the Imperial Aramaic p (the second letter in A); and there are other letter forms which will be discussed in the present author’s study of the development of the Aramaic script at Taymāʾ (Macdonald [in prep. a]).
This text shows that different forms of the same letter within the Aramaic alphabet could be held in the memories of scribes, and presumably readers, and used as they pleased to achieve various effects. Such a conclusion is not particularly startling but it shows the dangers of trying to use supposed palaeographical sequences to date inscriptions.

There’s a lot of very insightful observations here and I think the second paragraph is especially important (we’ll probably return to this point in my next post). But especially given the non-linear development of letter shapes Macdonald highlights here, I’m not fully convinced yet that Tayma Aramaic is definitely its own thing. In particular, I think it rather closely resembles the corpus of Nabataean inscriptions from the first (and maybe second) century BCE, before Nabataean had reached its classical, spidery shape.

The closest point of comparison, in my view, is in the Tayma Aramaic inscription TA 14285+14286+13651 (vol. 2: 117-118), which could actually be classified as Nabataean based on its contents:

Macdonald (vol. 2: 118) relates this inscription to “the Nabataean king known in Classical sources as Malichus [II] … [who] reigned from AD 40–70 and so year 17 of his reign would be AD 56/57” (numeral “[II]” in original). But check out this inscription from Tell al-Shuqafiyya, Egypt:

The synchronism of Cleopatra’s year 18 and Malichus’ year 26 shows that the date corresponds to 34 BCE, ninety years earlier than the date Macdonald suggests for the inscription from Tayma (based on the overlap, we must be dealing with Cleopatra VII and Malichus I). Yet, although there are certainly some differences in particular letter shapes, the overall script type seems highly similar to me. For instance, both inscriptions have the typical round 𐢁 ʾ, the roofless 𐢃 b, the zig-zagging non-final 𐢍 y, back-looping 𐢙 ṣ, and the vertical but not (yet) connecting 𐢝 š (but in the Tayma inscription, note the broad-tailed 𐢘 p here too). Unless there is some archeological argument I’m missing, it seems preferable to date both inscriptions to roughly the same period and interpret the date in the one from Tayma as year 17 of Malichus I, 45 BCE. In terms of script, it would be odd to call an Egyptian inscription referring to a Nabataean king “Tayma Aramaic”, and in fact the editor on DiCoNab—none other than Michael Macdonald—opts for Nabataean.3

Several of the other Tayma Aramaic inscriptions reminded me of BCE Nabataean inscriptions. Compare TA 17431 (vol. 2: 118-120) to the Nabataean one above as well as CIS II 349 (from Petra, 69 BCE) below:

Or TM.TAr.003 (vol. 3: 40-41) to MPNab 3 (from Petra, completed 99 BCE):

Others are just very close to Imperial Aramaic, which is also the case for the most archaic inscriptions mentioning Nabataean kings. Like an alleged Tayma Aramaic graffito, JSNab 334, and CNIK 1 (from Elusa, 2nd or early 1st c. BCE):

Or, perhaps a better comparison, TM.TAr.004 (vol. 3: 41-44) and an Aramaic-Dadanitic bilingual from al-Ula, RCU.2023.150:

In both these last comparisons, the Tayma Aramaic text is actually a bit more developed in both spelling and letter shapes than the text mentioning the Nabataeans, but mostly in ways that are shared with later Nabataean. (The exception, again, is the lengthened 𐢘 p).

In his commentary on TM.TAr.003, Macdonald writes: “The script of this text is remarkable for the variety of its letter forms and can be classed neither as Imperial Aramaic nor Nabataean, though it has some letter forms typical of each” (vol. 3: 40, emphasis mine). For the most part, this statement appears to me to be applicable to Tayma Aramaic as a whole. Given the apparent dating of the first entirely Tayma Aramaic inscription we considered to the middle of the first century BCE and the relative chronology where Tayma Aramaic precedes “Classical” Nabataean (see the triple funerary monument and occasional dating to kings of Lihyan, who ruled Tayma before the Nabataeans), can we just take Tayma Aramaic as a transitional, first-centuries-BCE script type between Imperial Aramaic and Nabataean? If so, that would fit nicely with the explicitly Nabataean inscriptions from this period, which similarly lack many typical features of mainstream Nabataean. I’m sympathetic to Macdonald’s implied objections against using the term Nabataean for inscriptions from Lihyanite Tayma (just like I wouldn’t want to call the ones from Egypt Tayma Aramaic).5 Maybe we could settle for Arabian Aramaic,6 or maybe Arabian square script and then explicitly contrast it with Jewish square script. Either way, I think we should include this material in discussions of the development from Imperial Aramaic to Nabataean proper, not sequester it in a niche of its own.

#Arabic #Aramaic #Nabataean

The end of Antiquity

It’s becoming apparent that I have an above-average interest in oversimplified schemes of historical periodization. Recently, it’s been on overdrive, kicked off by a pretty practical question. It would be convenient if I could tell a couple of students in a course I’m teaching soon that the Nabataean script is from Classical Antiquity, while the Nabataeo-Arabic and Paleo-Arabic scripts are from Late Antiquity. Are they?

The issue here is “Late Antiquity”. As we know, the idea of the Middle Ages is that they’re in between (Classical) Antiquity, traditionally held to end with the deposition of the last Western Roman emperor in 476, and the Modern period or specifically the Renaissance, the rebirth of Classical culture and learning. Historians have put forward the concept of Late Antiquity to point out that 476 is a random-ass watershed and that the centuries on both sides of it resemble each other a lot, more than they do their more distant Ancient predecessors and Medieval successors. There’s no clear break from an obviously Ancient fifth century (up to 476) and an obviously Medieval world right after it. Late Antiquity is supposed to emphasize the gradual transformation from the Roman Empire to Early Medieval Europe (and the same in the Near/Middle East, I guess). The real Middle Ages then start sometime in the eighth century, probably the second half, when we’ve got Charlemagne in Western Europe and Abbasids in the Middle East—good Medieval stuff.

The problem I’ve been running into is that both schemes kind of suck to me. The late fifth and sixth centuries feel decidedly un-Medieval in many ways, with Roman generals fighting barbarian tribes in Italy and Africa and Spain and so on, while the seventh and early eighth don’t have all that much Antiquity left in them. Especially the seventh century feels like a fish nor fowl situation: so much is changing all over the place at the same time.

So, after long but not necessarily thorough consideration, I’ve tentatively reached the following, vibes-based scheme, which splits Late Antiquity up into two or three different periods. I give some of the main characteristics of each period so you can see if they pass the vibe check for you as well. Cut-off dates are rounded for convenience.

• 30 BCE–200 CE: Early Roman Empire. Pax Romana, most of the time. Julio-Claudian, Flavian, Nerva-Antonine dynasties. Gladiator is shot. Paganism. Stoic philosophers. Jewish revolts. Transitions from Second Temple Judaism to early Rabbinic Judaism (Mishnah codified ca. 200) and early Christianity. Parthians.
• 200–400: Middle Roman Empire. Constant shifts in governance type: militaristic soap opera dynasty (Severans), Crisis of the Third Century, Tetrarchy, back to single emperors to co-emperors to single emperors. Finally, definitive split into East and West. Rome (the city) replaced as capital by Milan and Nicomedia/Constantinople early on in this period. Massive expansion of Roman citizenship (Constitutio Antoniniana). Christianity goes from proscribed to persecuted to tolerated to state religion. Fights over the Trinity. Neoplatonist philosophers. Both Talmuds mostly written, Palestinian Talmud redacted. Sasanian Persians.
• 400-600: Late Roman Empire. Huns! Goths! Migration Period more generally. Bad times for the Romans, most of the time. Western capital moved to Ravenna. Western Empire breaks up into Germanic-ruled kingdoms. Transition from de facto Germanic shogunate to a de jure Germanic kingdom in Italy means no more Western “Emperors”. “Last of the Romans” figures like Aetius, Belisarius, and Boethius both before and after 476. Towards the end of this period, Lombards and Pannonian Avars play at Ostrogoths and Huns 2.0. Fights over Christology. Neoplatonist academies. Babylonian Talmud completed and redacted, still in Sasanian Persia.
• 600-720: Nascent Middle Ages. End of Justinian’s dynasty. Islam! Lombards and Avars fully entrenched in Italy and Pannonia, respectively. Slavic and early Turkic expansions. Pippinids. Last known act of the Roman Senate in 603. Gregory I “the Great”, first Pope with a monastic background, one of the last from a Roman senatorial family. Visigoths, Anglo-Saxons, Lombards, and remaining pagan and Arian Franks convert to Catholicism. First Geonim. Apocalyptic war between the baby Byzantine Empire and Sasanian Persia followed by Islamic conquest of (large parts of) both of them.
• 720-1000: Early Middle Ages. 720ish as cutoff date: early Islamic conquests run out of steam (failed siege of Constantinople 717-18; conventional start of Reconquista in 722; Battle of Tours 732). Introduction of Arabic as chancery language and widespread conversion in newly Islamic territories. Charles Martel consolidates power in soon-to-be Carolingian Francia. Isaurian dynasty in Byzantium, Iconoclasm. Byzantine emperors stop using the nomen Flavius, putting an end to Roman naming conventions. Avars settle down. Pope Gregory II distances Rome from Byzantines; arrangement with Liutprand, Lombard king of Italy, gives rise to Papal State. Bede, the “first medieval scholar”. Old Irish, Old English (in Latin script).

Enough significant events cluster around 600 and 720 that I think it makes sense to take these as big cutoff points. We’ve got enough Ancient things going on up to 600 and Medieval things after 720 that we can say that Antiquity ended around 600 and the Middle Ages proper started around 720. The intermediate long seventh century could go either way, but it feels more like everything is being put into place for the Middle Ages than that there is so much lingering Antiquity being cleaned up. So I’m going with Nascent Middle Ages to reflect that.

That places Nabataean (Early Roman Empire), Nabataeo-Arabic (Middle Roman Empire), and Paleo-Arabic (Late Roman Empire) scripts in Antiquity and the unhyphenated Arabic one in the (Nascent) Middle Ages. Something I can work with.

Happy New Year!

#Arabic #history #Nabataean

Petra. Petra hills. Hillock opposite Ed Deir [between 1940 and 1946]
Matson Photo Service
1 negative : glass, dry plate ; 5 x 7 in.

#Petra #EdDeir #Nabataean #Al-Deir #Jordan #WadiMusa #MatsonPhotoService #Petra(Extinctcity) #photography

https://www.loc.gov/item/2019694808/

Petra. Khazne with ravine from N.E. [between 1940 and 1946]
Matson Photo Service
1 negative : glass, dry plate ; 5 x 7 in.

#Petra #El-Sukkā #Jordan #UNESCO #Khazneh #Treasury #Nabataean #MatsonPhotoService #wwwloenernl #Petra(Extinctcity) #photography

https://www.loc.gov/item/2019694783/

Who Smote Whom? The geography of Israelite Transjordan (IV)

Back by personal demand: the conclusion to last summer’s series on Gilead and Bashan (Part I, II, III).

First of all, I’d like to draw your attention to an excellent pair of comments by Yitzchak Dickman. Some corrections based on what Yitzchak wrote and the sources he referred to:

• Havvoth-Jair most probably refers to the area around Irbid, more or less where I placed Machir before.
• Rohmer (2020) also places Argob in the Golan (just the northern part in his view) and makes a convincing argument that Bashan only includes the western part of the Hauran. The eastern part was known as… Hauran, but it isn’t mentioned in the Bible (Ezekiel’s Hauran is another region, farther north).
• The identifications of Kenath with Qanawat and Salchah with Salkhad aren’t so straightforward. Yitzchak mentions the possibility of Kenath referring to al-Karak (al-Sharqi), in Daraa Governorate; Rohmer (2020: 296, 298 = 426) alternatively writes that “following Noth, the majority of contemporary Biblical scholars do not place it in the Hauran, but northwest of Amman” (my translation). Rohmer also points out that while the name Salkhad can be traced back to Nabataean at least (ṣlḥd), this is actually quite different from biblical Salchah (slkh): “only the lam is identical between the two words!” (2020: 290; translation mine).

Here’s a nice map from Rohmer illustrating this updated view:

So, what’s up with the tribes shifting north and Gilead shifting south?

Yitzchak Dickman also presented an interesting theory involving Judahite expansion into Transjordan in the comments linked above, but I think we may be able to explain the drift by looking at some other, more securely attested conquests in the Iron Age.

Summing up: Israel loses the Mishor (southernmost Israelite Transjordan) and never recovers it; loses, regains, loses Gilead (central Israelite Transjordan); and conquers but then once again loses Bashan (northern Israelite Transjordan). While they end up losing everything, there’s a clear south-to-north shift in Israelite territory over time, while the off-and-on possession of Gilead could account for the blurring of its borders. We can imagine the tribal territories and regional names shifting in a few stages:

Ninth century: Tribal Israelites in northwest Jordan

Status quo before Mesha’s revolt, matching the non-Priestly text of Numbers 32. Reuben is on the Mishor (up to Wadi al-Hidan), Moab south of Wadi al-Hidan, Gad mostly on the east bank of the Jordan between Reuben in the south, Ammon in the east, and the Jabbok in the north. Gilead 1.0 (the highest hilly area north of the western Jabbok IMHO, contra Finkelstein et al.), Machir, Havvoth-Jair and maybe Kenath/Nobah are other distinct tribal regions between the Jabbok (or just south of it) and the Yarmuk. Reconceptualization of all these as Manassite Gilead yield Gilead 2.0. Bashan is not Israelite and therefore not originally mentioned in Numbers.

In the 840s, Moab conquers the Reubenite Mishor. Reuben’s “people become few” (Deut 33:6) and he will “no longer excel” (Gen 49:4).

Eighth century: Transjordan lost and regained, conquest of Bashan

The main terminological development I imagine here is the use of Gilead, the most fertile part of (originally) Israelite Transjordan, as a pars pro toto for all the lost and subsequently regained territory, including that of Gad: Gilead 3.0. The tribal identity of this larger Gilead seems to be more Gadite than Manassite: the loss and recapture may be described as a “trampled” Gad “striking” back (Gen 49:19), or maybe the memory of this tribal expansion is directly attested in the reference to God “enlarging Gad’s domain” (Deut 33:20).

Seventh century and later: Reimagining tribal territories after the Assyrian conquest

After 733, there was no Israelite Transjordan, and after 722 there was no more kingdom of Israel to begin with. What we get in the Deuteronomistic History especially is different combinations of the regions of the Mishor, Gilead (3.0), and Bashan and the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh.

One way to do this is by assigning each of these regions to one (half-)tribe: Reuben in the Mishor, Gad in Gilead, and Manasseh in Bashan. This is what we (mostly) see in Joshua 13.

Alternatively, you can keep the historical memory that Gad was south of the Jabbok and Manasseh was north of it. Since Gilead (3.0) now extends on both sides of the Jabbok, that results in Reuben (which hasn’t been historically prominent for centuries) and Gad sharing the Mishor and Gilead south of the Jabbok, part of Manasseh living in Gilead north of the Jabbok, and another part of Manasseh living in Bashan. This is what we mostly see in Deuteronomy 3.

Finally, you can draw the Mishor into a new, Mega-Gilead (Gilead 4.0), using it to refer to all the originally Israelite lands in Transjordan (but excluding Bashan). This appears to be the usage in the Priestly text of Numbers 32, which repeatedly refers to Gad and Reuben settling in “the cities of Gilead”. The Persian-period or early Hellenistic text of 1 Chron 5 also refers to Reuben’s territory in the Mishor as part of Gilead.

Of these three systems, I’m inclined to see Deut 3’s as the oldest (memory of divided Gilead 3.0), followed by Josh 13 (Gilead : Bashan mapped to Gad : Manasseh), and then the Priestly and Chronicles one (Gilead-Mishor distinction abandoned). As far as I can tell, this development matches mainstream ideas about when each of these texts was written.

There’s a few loose ends that we haven’t discussed (why does Joshua 13 say Manasseh starts at Mahanaim, on the Jabbok? why does 1 Chron 5 talk about Gad living in Bashan?). For now, though, I think this makes good sense of the shifting terms and territories we see in the different texts. And just in case anyone wants to fund a trip to Jordan to go see what things look like on the ground—do let me know.

#Bible #Chronicles #Deuteronomy #Genesis #Hebrew #Joshua #Nabataean #Numbers

Petra, Mt. Hor and Akabah. Petra Mountain Ridge, Mount Seir. Gen. 14:5-6, 32:3 between 1950 and 1977.
Matson Photo Service
1 slide : color ; 2 x 2 in.

#Petra #MtHor #Akabah #PetraMountainRidge #MountSeir #MatsonPhotoService #Nabataean #Jordan #Al-Deir #MatsonPhotoServices #Bible #2-inch #Petra(Extinctcity) #photography

https://www.loc.gov/item/2019705663/

Palestine. Transjordania. Petra [between 1907 and 1946]
American Colony (Jerusalem). Photo Department
1 transparency : glass, color ; 5 x 7 in.

#Palestine #Transjordania #Petra #Jerusalem #PhotoDepartment #Jordan #Nabataean #Al-Khazneh #AmericanColony #Petra(Extinctcity) #photography

https://www.loc.gov/item/2019701954/

#Nabataean Religion and Its #Pantheon Through Pre-Islamic and Early Islam Sources: al-Lāt, al-ʽUzzā and #Manāt

#AncientNearEast #AncientReligions
https://www.academia.edu/45086538/Nabataean_Religion_and_Its_Pantheon_Through_Pre_Islamic_and_Early_Islam_Sources_al_Lāt_al_ʽUzzā_and_Manāt