#New on #OCIANA - A Thamudic text from al-ʿArfāʾ, near Ṭāʾif. It isn't a name or a prayer. Just a melancholic statement: '𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒐 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒔 𝒅𝒊𝒆𝒔,' a sentiment echoed in Jāhilī poetry centuries later. Find more in the commentary: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...
I'm giving a talk for the Cambridge Classical Association on Friday, which is online and free to attend so I think open to all. Details here: www.tickettailor.com/events/facul... #ancientbluesky #classicsbluesky
Select tickets – Writing endangerment and loss: Lessons from ancient Cyprus for today's minority scripts – Zoom
Writing endangerment and loss: Lessons from ancient Cyprus for today's minority scripts – Zoom, Fri 6 Nov 2026 - Dr Pippa Steele, PI of the VIEWS project,
tickettailor.com
A superb piece of work. Delighted that it’s being done, and that more inscriptions are being published all the time!
Safaitic@safaitic.bsky.social · 3d ago𝑱𝙪𝒔𝙩 𝙥𝒖𝙗𝒍𝙞𝒔𝙝𝒆𝙙! The 1st of 6 volumes: 𝐷𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐴𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑁𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝐴𝑟𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑎 Open Access at this link: tinyurl.com/5n7ht4nj. Nearly 2000 words, with citations and etymological commentary. More soon!
An interesting attestation of s³fr = ‘write’ in Taymanitic. And evidence, to my mind, that Heb. sefer (‘book’), SPR = ‘to tell’, Phoen. mspr (‘number’), Ugar. SPR = ‘to count’, etc., go back to a root in *ts (s³), and that Akk. šapāru = ‘to write’ is distinct, from šapāru = ‘to send a message’.
Safaitic@safaitic.bsky.social · yesterday#Update on #OCIANA: #Taymanitic is one of the most poorly understood epigraphic categories of Ancient Arabia. This inscription, previously misread as ṯfryzbd, a nonsensical string, is in fact: s³fr-h zbd 'Zabd wrote this', further demonstrating that the star/sun glyph = samek.
A small detail, but a big deal because Arabic merged s³ (samek) and s¹ (س), indicating that Taymanitic did not partake in a major Arabic sound change. Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...
#Update on #OCIANA: #Taymanitic is one of the most poorly understood epigraphic categories of Ancient Arabia. This inscription, previously misread as ṯfryzbd, a nonsensical string, is in fact: s³fr-h zbd 'Zabd wrote this', further demonstrating that the star/sun glyph = samek.
Indeed, Akkadian šapārum is cognate with Sabaic sfr “to dispatch” and Arabic sāfara “to travel”
It’s an immensely quotable body of literature and I’m referencing it constantly because I can.
me, a late bronze age levantine peasant: 𐎐𐎌𐎚 𐎖𐎐𐎊 𐎁𐎍 𐎆𐎖𐎗𐎀𐎚 𐎍𐎍 𐎅𐎐𐎄 the humble alimentación ugarit:
Absurd Gulf Arabic doublets of the day عَكس ʕaks 'opposite; photograph, badge; axle' n.b. 1. The first meaning is from Old Ar. 2. The second meaning is said to be borrowed from Pers. (itself from Ar.). 3. 'Badge' < 'photograph'? 4. The last meaning is probably from English.
Sorry, didn't realize it was paywalled, but I just put it on Academia!
Review of Cherry, Z., Aramaic Loanwords in Neo-Assyrian
Review of Cherry, Z., Aramaic Loanwords in Neo-Assyrian
academia.edu
Neo-Assyrian has both madbar- and mudābir-, which makes me suspect they got it from Arabic and borrowed the broken plural stem as well as the singular. (The m- shows it must be a loanword from West Semitic, should dissimilate to n- otherwise.)
University of Chicago Press Journals: Cookie absent
journals.uchicago.edu
yes it is now palmgrove in arabic too. but these are two large wadis, north and south, taking from east side of hijaz to mecca area.
I was speaking to someone on here recently about a language that had borrowed a word for ‘finger’. Please reply with what strike you as odd examples of borrowing. I’ll start. Why did Safaitic speakers borrow a NW Semitic word for the desert (mdbr)? Not inexplicable, but odd.
Is it a borrowing? Or is it just native, maybe proto CS? I say this because Safaific nxl “valley” is gone in later Arabic but survives in toponyms, very far from NWS: naxlah ashshāmiyyah/ yamāniyyah btwn taif and Mecca !
New open access publication! 𝐷𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐴𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑁𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝐴𝑟𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑎 Volume 1 of 6 www.academia.edu/180025953/Al...
🧟 spooky lexicography 👻 "Incubus, nightmare" in Syriac is ܢܠܐ /nålå/ or ܟܒܘܫܐ /kåbošå/ (≈ Arb كابوس /kābūs/), w/ Syr ܟܒܫ /kḇaš/ ≈ Arb كبس /kabasa/ "press". Syr /nålå/ (& sim. in JBA & Mnd) is presumably rel. to Akk /nâlu/ "lie down", cf. also Syr/JBA/Mand /nawwel/ "torment" (AIOA 75).
𝑱𝙪𝒔𝙩 𝙥𝒖𝙗𝒍𝙞𝒔𝙝𝒆𝙙! The 1st of 6 volumes: 𝐷𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐴𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑁𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝐴𝑟𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑎 Open Access at this link: tinyurl.com/5n7ht4nj. Nearly 2000 words, with citations and etymological commentary. More soon!
Qatari Arabic wotd بقّم baggam 'to surface (of a pearldiver)' Source: موسوعة قطر البحرية I have not heard of this word in other sources or dialects, and I do not know the origin.
so as this shabbos is my birthday (turning 36 😭) and so i wont be around here, and hopefully schmoozing with a couple friend during the evening, im going to post some Halloween playlist picks. some classics you may or may not know.
Where does the name Aaron (אַהֲרֹן) come from? I’m wondering if it could be a variation of the Egyptian Hrw-nfr (‘Fair day’?), but with the elements interpreted as plurals. That could then yield, say, *harúw-na(firuw) > *hərūnə > *ʾahrun > אַהֲרֹן. Does that work? pnm.uni-mainz.de/name/727
Gilgamesh, dearest friend, alone my equal. Having bad dreams again? Ah, I see. Yes, I see. No, my friend, those omens are auspicious.
Bar Hebraeus' argument against Islam sounds almost as racist as some modern ones put forward by the usual Dude Bro apologists (Source: Barbara Roggema, the Legend of Sergius Bahira Eastern Christian Apologetics and Apocalyptic in Response to Islamp. 21
Congrats to the team. Arabia's been such a blind spot in the out-of-Africa story for so long, and it's good to see the green-corridor routes getting proper fieldwork. The tools are open source too, so others can actually build on them.
