Ahmad Al-Jallad Draft (March 12, 2021) for discussion. Request permission to cite: al-jallad.1@osu.

edu

The Religion and Rituals of the Nomads of Pre-Islamic

Arabia: A Reconstruction based on the Safaitic Inscriptions
Ahmad Al-Jallad
Draft (March 12, 2021) for discussion. Request permission to cite.

Contents
1 Introduction .............................................................................................................................................. 3
1.1 Religion and the Inscriptions of the pre-Islamic Nomads ............................................................. 6
1.2 Scope .................................................................................................................................................. 7
1.2.1 Previous works and present goals............................................................................................... 10
2 Rites ......................................................................................................................................................... 11
2.1 Animal Sacrifice .............................................................................................................................. 11
2.1.1 Sacrifice before/during dangerous activities ......................................................................... 14
2.1.2 Seasonal Sacrifices ................................................................................................................... 15
2.1.3 Location of Sacrifice: the ṣamd ............................................................................................... 16
2.1.4 Thanksgiving? .......................................................................................................................... 18
2.2 Erection of the nṣb stone................................................................................................................. 19
2.2.1 Statues ....................................................................................................................................... 22
2.3 The Pilgrimage ................................................................................................................................ 22
2.3.1 Time period of the pilgrimage................................................................................................. 23
2.3.2 Pilgrimage sites......................................................................................................................... 24
2.4 Ritual Purity .................................................................................................................................... 26
2.5 Offerings .......................................................................................................................................... 28
2.5.1 Unspecified offerings................................................................................................................ 28
2.5.2 Burnt offerings and libations .................................................................................................. 29
2.5.3 Images ....................................................................................................................................... 31
2.6 Vows and Oaths............................................................................................................................... 34
2.7 Sacred Water ................................................................................................................................... 35
3 Divinities and their Roles in the lives of Humans................................................................................ 36
3.1 Location of the deities ..................................................................................................................... 40
3.2 The Gadds ........................................................................................................................................ 40

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3.3 The gods and their worshippers ................................................................................................ 41

3.3.1 Travel ........................................................................................................................................ 43
3.3.2 Far from home and reunion .................................................................................................... 43
3.3.3 Assistance and Justice.............................................................................................................. 44
3.3.4 Curing illness and prolonging life........................................................................................... 46
3.4 Sin? ................................................................................................................................................... 47
3.4.1 Forsaken by the gods ............................................................................................................... 49
3.5 Malignant Magic ............................................................................................................................. 50
4 Fate .......................................................................................................................................................... 51
5 Afterlife ................................................................................................................................................... 54
6 Visual Representation of Deities and the Divine World ..................................................................... 55
7 Amplification and Why Write .............................................................................................................. 59
8 Worldview – a reconstruction ............................................................................................................... 61
Appendix: Index of Divinities in the Safaitic Inscriptions.......................................................................... 62
Sigla ............................................................................................................................................................ 63
Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................. 65

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1 Introduction
The oldest surviving records from Ancient North Arabia are religious invocations to
the gods carved on stone in an indigenous family of alphabets we call Ancient North
Arabian.1 Perhaps one of the earliest texts of this sort comes from the upper Wādī
Sirḥān, the site of Bāyir in Jordan; while undated, its contents suggest that it was
composed sometime the first half of the first millennium BCE.2 In it, an anonymous
supplicant seeks refuge in the three gods of the Iron Age kingdoms east of the Jordan:
HTham 13
h mlkm w-kms w-qws b-km ʿwḏn

‘O Malkom and Kemosh and Qaws, in you we seek refuge’

The city of Dūmat – ancient Adumatu “the mighty stronghold of the Arabs”4 – had
its own writing tradition which we call Dumaitic.5 An inscription from near that site
invokes another trinity of gods to fulfill the wishes of its anonymous author.
WTI 23
h rḍw w-nhy w-ʿtrsm sʿd-n ʿl-wdd-y

‘O Ruḍaw and Nuhay and ʿAttarsamē,6 help me in the matter of my wish’

1
The scripts classified under the Ancient North Arabian rubric are sisters of the Ancient South Arabian script and
together comprise the South Semitic script family. On these alphabets and their distribution, see Macdonald 2000a.
See Al-Jallad 2018 on their linguistic features. See Sass 1991 for a discussion of how the Ancient North Arabian
scripts might related to the South Arabian and Northwest Semitic alphabets.
2
This text is carved in the Thamudic B alphabet. Thamudic is a blanket term applied to the poorly understood and
classified South Semitic scripts of North Arabia, which is provisionally divided into three categories – B, C, and D.
See again Macdonald 2000a, and 2000b specifically on the history of the term Thamudic. The most up-to-date
description of the Thamudic B corpus is Norris 2018a.
3
This text is undated but is accompanied by a Canaanite inscription, which unfortunately remains undeciphered. The
Thamudic B script was in use in the middle of the first millennium BCE but we do not know its upper chronological
limits. The content of this inscription along with the accompanying Canaanite text, suggests that it was carved
sometime in the first quarter of the first millennium BCE.
4
This is how the city is described in the Esarhaddon prism;
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1929-1012-1; see also: Leichty 2011: 19.
5
See Winnett and Reed (1970) on the identification of the script type and Norris 2018b for the latest survey of
Dumaitic and other scripts found at the oasis.
6
On the vocalization of this name, see Macdonald et al. 1996: 479-480 and Al-Jallad 2021.

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A recurring phrase carved in the script of the oasis of Taymāʾ – which was employed
in the middle of the 1st millennium BCE – could preserve a quotation of liturgy of
the tutelary deity of city, Ṣalm.7
WTay 1
mn smʿ l-ṣlm l twy

‘those who heed Ṣalm will not perish’

And to the southwest in the Ḥigāz, the god Ḏū Ġaybat, perhaps “Master of the
Unseen”, received pilgrims at his sanctuary near ancient Dadān (mod. Al-ʿUlā).8 The
Dadanitic inscriptions were carved sometime in the second half of the 1st millennium
BCE.9
Umm Daraǧ 22
ḏr/w ʾ----w{r}
ḥggw/[l-] ḏġbt
f rḍ-hm/w ʾḫrt-hm

Ḏr and ʾw----w{r}
performed the pilgrimage {for} Ḏġbt
and so favor them and their posterity

Texts such as these number in the thousands and provide a direct vista into the
religious world of the pre-Islamic North Arabians – settled folk and nomads alike.
Yet they remain underutilized. Rather Islamic-period narrative sources, such as the
famous book of Hišām ibn al-Kalbī, kitābu l-ʾaṣnām (The Book of Idols), and reports
in the sīrah literature, continue to be the first port of call for understanding the world
view and rituals of the pre-Islamic Arabian tribespeople. These materials, however,
are riddled with problems of reliability. Paganism was an established trope used to
bring into sharp relief the distinction between Islamic practice and what came

7
This inscription was first recorded by Philby and discussed by Van den Branden 1956, Ph 266.b. Winnett 1970
discusses the text further with a photograph and some speculative remarks on the god Ṣalm. On the Taymanitic
inscriptions, see Kootstra 2016.
8
On the inscriptions of ancient Dadān, see Sima 1999 and Kootstra 2019; on the scripts and languages of the oasis,
see Macdonald 2018 and 2019 for a concise summary of Dadanitic.
9
Rohmer and Charloux 2015:

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before.10 As Hawting convincingly argues, the narrative arch of kitābu l-ʾaṣnām –

the earliest work in the Islamic tradition devoted to the matter of pre-Islamic Arabian
religion – is the movement from primeval monotheism to paganism resulting from
the excessive veneration of ancestors and foreign influences ending ultimately with
the restoration of monotheism by the Islamic prophet.11 Mentions of the ancient gods
and traditional rites primarily served to fill out this narrative, warn against practices
that could lead to “shirk” (association with God), and – no less important – to
entertain. While many of the divine names and rituals have their source in legitimate
pre-Islamic beliefs (what Hawting calls the “kernel of truth”), none of information
contained therein comes directly from practitioners of these traditions. What reaches
us seems garbled and stereotyped.12 Ibn al-Kalbī assembles fragments of folklore
that preserve vague details of a distant past, but patches together something new – a
quilt depicting a universal history of faith.
What is noticeably absent from such works is any sense of a mythological framework
– the gods are isolated idols, stones, statues, and carvings, each one revered by a
different social group with no narrative connection between them or any description
of their role in cosmos.13 The narratives are filled with descriptions of rituals, but
their purpose and meaning seem lost . Of course, none of these details were
important for the goals of this genre of folklore, namely, to construct a jāhiliyyah
antithetical to Islam.
The present essay approaches pre-Islamic Arabian religion in another way, relying
primarily on the inscriptions and archaeological evidence. Practitioners of traditional
Arabian religion produced these artifacts; they are not filtered through a later
monotheistic lens nor re-appropriated for polemical purposes. At face value, they
provide an objective view into the religion and rituals of the pre-Islamic nomads.
Yet the evidence is fragmentary, and in languages and writing traditions that have
long gone extinct. A comparative approach is, therefore, necessary to interpret and
synthesize this material, but it comes with the inevitable pitfalls of circularity. And
so the interpretation of the inscriptional evidence must prioritize the epigraphic and

10
See Hawting (1999) for an in-depth discussion of these issues.
11
H. ibn al-Kalbī 1913 (ed.); Hawting 1999, ch. 4.
12
For a clear example of this, see Al-Jallad 2021, where the god Ruḍaw – who makes several appearances in the
inscriptions cited in this essay – is met with confusion by ibn al-Kalbī. Narrative sources reimagine him as a temple
destroyed by a superhuman zealot, al-Mustawghir, who reportedly lived over 300 years.

13
The exception being the three ‘daughters’ of Allāh, no doubt based on Q 53:19-20.

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archaeological context, a tafsīru n-nuqūši bi-n-nuqūš, as it were. In this way, literary

sources, such as the lore assembled by ibn al-Kalbī, can aid in arbitrating between
competing understandings but not act as an interpretive filter.

1.1 Religion and the Inscriptions of the pre-Islamic Nomads

Whatever circumstances brought writing to the nomads in the early-mid 1st
millennium BCE, it is clear that the skill was applied to the public invocation of
divine figures, to the carving of sacred messages.14 The Thamudic B corpus, the
oldest datable member of the Thamudic category,15 consists primarily of personal
names, sometimes accompanying the signing of rock art.16 But when a text contains
any content at all, it is invariably a prayer following a very strict formulaic structure:
h + divine name + imperative + object.17
This peculiar phenomenon of writing achieves its most elaborate form by the turn of
our era – the nomads east of the Ḥawrān expanded on the limited themes of the
Thamudic B texts18 to produce relatively lengthy inscriptions following a structure
quite similar to the monumental texts of Dadān, in a script we conventionally call
Safaitic.19 Putting aside isolated names and signatures, inscriptions containing
content overwhelmingly follow the structure below.

14
Macdonald 2010 – and in several other places earlier – suggests that the nomads had learned writing from oasis
dwellers and passed it on amongst each other in the desert as a way to pass the hours while pasturing. While this
hypothesis for the diffusion of the script seems quite likely, the great variation in alphabets attested in the inscriptions
suggest a complicated history of transmission, and none of the scripts can be directly derived from any of the oasis
alphabets that we know of.
15
See Norris (2018: 207-215) for a discussion on the chronology of this script family.
16
On the writing formulae of Thamudic B, see Norris 2018: 188-194.
17
Each major script type is associated with its own compositional formulae. Roughly speaking, the Thamudic C
inscriptions tend to follow the structure wdd + PN f + PN, and no prayers are attested in this variety. Thamudic D texts
are mostly amorous; they introduce the author with the pronominal element ʾn + PN, followed by a verb or adjective
of love and the name of the beloved. No prayers are so far attested in this script type either. Thamudic C texts are
impossible to date, while a single Thamudic D text is associated with a Nabataean inscription dated to 267 CE (JSNab
17); see Macdonald 402-405 for the most recent edition of the text; see Al-Jallad 2020b: 42-43 for a discussion of its
language.
18
I have suggested, based on the letter shapes and formulaic connections, that Safaitic grew out of the Thamudic B
writing tradition; see Al-Jallad and Jaworska 2019, ch. 1.
19
On the writing formulae employed in Safaitic, see Al-Jallad and Jaworska 2019, ch. 1. On the structure of
Dadanitic, see Sima 1999 and Kootstra 2019.

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l- Genealogy
w- Narrative
w-/f- Prayer / Curse

These literate nomads augmented their cultural practices with writing: graves could
be marked,20 ritualistic mourning commemorated,21 and prayers – as before –
immortalized.22

1.2 Scope
Ancient North Arabian is a blanket term encompassing all the varieties of the South
Semitic script – excluding the Ancient South Arabian musnad – employed across the
Peninsula for more than millennium.23 The label is a modern scholarly invention and
negatively defined. For this reason, a study of all the inscriptions belonging to this
category as reflective of a single cultural complex would be misguided. Rather, each
corpus should be investigated separately, with due attention to its geographic,
chronological, and linguistic peculiarities. Here I focus on the Safaitic inscriptions
and the scant material evidence that accompanies them, with some attention to
comparanda from other Ancient North and South Arabian texts and Near Eastern
traditions.

20
For example, Musée du Louvre AO: 4986.2 l ʿn bn ksṭ h-nfs ‘this funerary monument is for ʿn son of Ksṭ’; C 4206:
l ẓl bn mʿnn h- qbr ‘this grave is for Ẓl son of Mʿnn’; HCH 2: l hnʾ bn ʿqrb bn hnʾ bn ḥyr w h-rgm ‘this (inscription)
and funerary cairn are for Hnʾ son of ʿqrb son of Hnʾ son of Ḥyr’.
21
Writing was not only used to mark the grave of the deceased but also commemorate the grief of their loved ones.
Mourners, in addition to helping construct a funerary monument, would carve expressions of grief on a memorial
stone. The classic study of this phenomenon is Harding 1953, an intact burial cairn with over one hundred associated
inscriptions. For example, HCH 5: l śʿṯm bn ʿqrb bn hnʾ w bny w wgm ʿl-hnʾ ʿl-ʾḫ-h ‘By Śʿṯm son of ʿqrb son of Hnʾ
and he participated in the construction (of the funerary cairn) and grieved for Hnʾ, for his brother’. This text belongs
to the same funerary installation as HCH 2 above.
22
Safaitic prayers usually follow the narrative and will be discussed in detail in this essay, but it is important to note
that the Thamudic B isolated prayer type continues in Safaitic, e.g. Is.L 319: h rḍw hb l-qdm nqmt mn ʾsd ʾbl-h ‘O
Roḍaw, grant Qdm vengeance against those who raided his camels’.
23
It has been previously suggested that the South Semitic script family has two main categories, Ancient North
Arabian and Ancient South Arabian, but this assumes that the scripts belonging to the former category share a common
ancestor to the exclusion of the latter. This has not been demonstrated and indeed seems unlikely. Rather the South
Semitic script seems to have several parallel branches and the interrelationships of them have not yet been worked
out. See Al-Jallad 2015: 26-27.

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Safaitic too is a blanket term – but a more precise one – given to the writing tradition
and script the nomads of the basalt desert east of the Ḥawrān employed some twenty
centuries ago.24 Most of the inscriptions can be classified as graffiti as defined by
M.C.A. Macdonald – that is self-authored texts written in a public space.25 But this
does not diminish their significance to their audience nor does it suggest that such
texts had no role to play in the ritualistic/religious life of those who carved them.
Indeed, in a nomadic society without a professional scribal class or masons, any text
will fall into the graffiti category, no matter its significance.26 Safaitic inscriptions
often interfaced with socially important rituals, such as grieving for the dead, and
authors were very keen on their texts being seen, read, and left undamaged. The
following inscription illustrates this and the basic formulaic structure of Safaitic.

RSIS 126
Genealogy: l ʾwqr bn yʿmr bn ḏkr bn grmʾl
Narrative: wgm ʿl-mġny w ʿl-ṣʿd
Prayer/Curse: w ḥyy l-ḏ yqrʾ h-ktb w ʿwr l-m ʿwr

Genealogy: By ʾwqr son of Yʿmr son of Ḏkr son of Grmʾl

Narrative: He grieved for Mġny and for Ṣʿd
Prayer/Curse: So may he who would read this writing have long life but let
whosoever effaces it go blind

While the Safaitic inscriptions reflect a rather homogeneous writing tradition – in

both its language and themes – they were not the product of a single, self-conscious

24
For the description of Safaitic and its associated writing tradition, see Al-Jallad and Jaworska (2019) and Al-Jallad
(2019) for the latest grammatical sketch. This dating is rough estimate. The upper limits of Safaitic documentation are
unknown, but the small minority of dated texts suggest that authors were particularly active at the turn of the era.
There is some circumstantial archaeological evidence that the Safaitic script was employed as early as the 3rd c. BCE
(Akkermans 2019). The inscriptions are thought to cease sometime before the 4th c. CE as there are no explicit
mentions of Christian (Macdonald 1992a; Al-Jallad 2019). There may be, however, at least one Safaitic inscription
with a clear reference to Jesus
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc6Rv8d63hE&t=686s&ab_channel=ACORJordan). The edition of this
inscription is currently in preparation and will be published soon.
25
See Macdonald 2010; 2015.
26
Opinions on the function of the Safaitic inscriptions vary from meaningless doodles (Littmann 1940; Macdonald
2010) to a magico-sacred artform (Grimme 1929; Eksell 2002). I have attempted to suggest a middle ground in 2015b
(ch. 1) – rather than assuming a single interpretation for the entire corpus, the contents of the inscriptions themselves
should primarily inform their interpretation. Like all inscriptional corpora, text genres range from the profane to the
sacred.

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community.27 There were many tribal groups in the area who made use of this
alphabet, and it is unclear how broadly applicable the cultural data in the available
texts are. Moreover, there are great uncertainties regarding the chronology of the
Safaitic inscriptions; most texts are not dated and even those that are only provide
rough chronological information.28 These factors make it impossible to distinguish
between regional variation and diachronic changes in religious trends, if there were
any. Nevertheless, the relatively stable writing tradition and restricted geographical
area suggests some degree of cultural homogeneity; the comprehensive examination
of this material, therefore, allows us to form a low-resolution image of the world
view and rituals of the nomads of this region, so long as we keep in mind that every
rite described herein may not have been performed by every group.
We should also draw attention to the context of writing among the nomads and its
consequences on our image of the religious landscape. Unlike the monumental
temple inscriptions of Ancient South Arabia or those commemorating pilgrimages
and festivals at ancient Dadān, there was no institution in place to ensure any
uniformity in the production of these texts. It is unclear what forces were behind the
commemoration of a ritual act by an inscription. Do these texts simply reflect an
individual choice of a literal person or did certain circumstances – lost to us now –
call for an inscription? This uncertainty biases our data in a way we cannot
understand. As such, we should not assume that what was put into writing
encompasses the full spectrum of religious practices. Gaps in our knowledge are
made clear when we look to liturgical language. We have only isolated literary
specimens – poems, songs, and liturgy; all appear to be ad hoc decisions by certain
writers to carve selections of their oral literature on rock.29 But even with all of this
said, the thousands upon thousands of Safaitic inscriptions constitute our clearest
window into pre-Islamic Arabian religion and ritual. They allow us to see what was
there for certain, even if we cannot necessarily know what practices were absent on
their basis alone.

27
On this point, see the important articles in Macdonald 2009. But also see Al-Jallad 2020 on some of the
commonalities that must have bound these communities together.
28
The conventional chronology of Safaitic places the production of these texts between the 1st c. BCE to the 4th c. CE,
but see the remarks in Al-Jallad 2015, ch. 1, on problems with these assumptions, and Akkermans 2019 for possible
archaeological evidence pushing the starting date back to the 3 rd c. BCE.
29
The discovered literary texts so far number only 2, Al-Jallad 2015b and 2017.

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Map 1: The Ḥarrah (basalt desert)

1.2.1 Previous works and present goals

Perhaps the first major work on pre-Islamic Arabian religion based on the Safaitic
inscriptions was Grimme’s 1929 study Texte und Untersuchungen zur ṣafatenisch-
arabischen Religion. In this book, Grimme advances the theory that the inscriptions
were part of a cult of the dead centered in the Ḥarrah, which he argues their authors
considered sacred land. Most scholars have rejected this hypothesis and for good
reason – most of Grimme’s claims were only loosely based on the inscriptional
evidence.30 Most studies of North Arabian religion as reflected in the Safaitic texts
have focused primarily on divinities, with only passing references to rituals and no
attempt to reconstruct a religious system or worldview.31 This literature will be
treated in more detail in the appendix of this work.
Eksell has, in some ways, picked up again on Grimme’s approach. Rather than
investigating the sacred through only those texts that contained explicit references
30
See the discussion in Eskell 2002: 105-115.
31
See Macdonald (1992b: 421-422) for an outline of the religious themes in the inscriptions and deities contained
therein. For previous descriptions of Safaitic religion and divinities, see Littmann 1940: 105-108; Ryckmans 1951;
Dussaud, 1955: 140-147; Clark 1979: 125-135; Knauf 1985b; Ababneh 2005: 54-57; Al-Manaser 2008:24; Bennett
2014.

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to religious rites, she proposed that the writing tradition itself had a magico-sacral
dimension, which she described as “a complexity of codes reflecting a
multirelational cosmos”.32 Her arguments that the inscriptions were not entirely
frivolous are sound – indeed, many of the text genres that we encounter in Safaitic
are found in neighboring monumental traditions. And it is undeniable that the texts
interface with sacral activities. Yet, the crux of the matter is this: was the act of
inscribing itself sacral? Or was skill neutral and only achieved a sacral status once
applied to the commemoration of rites and people? Macdonald holds the latter
opinion; for him, the script was normally employed for the carving of profane texts
(idle graffiti) and was only on ad-hoc occasions used for other purposes.33
In some ways, attempting to account for the Safaitic corpus as a whole seems to be
the wrong approach. The present study will examine the evidence from the bottom
up, refraining from applying an all-encompassing label to the writing tradition. A
significant section of the Safaitic corpus contains culturally important information:
commemorations of religious rites and the dead, petitions to the gods, and prayers
and curses to protect the inscription, its inscriber, and its reader. These texts clearly
address both a human and divine audience and so they will be our focus. Rather than
etymologizing divine names, I will attempt to reconstruct the ritualistic world of the
nomads based on the contents of the aforementioned category of texts. At the end of
this essay, I will turn back to the religious underpinnings of the written word in an
attempt to offer an explanation for the production of these types of inscriptions. The
essay is followed by an index of divine names that occur in Safaitic with some
cultural, historical, and etymological remarks.

2 Rites34
2.1 Animal Sacrifice
Animal sacrifice is the most common religious rite commemorated in the
inscriptions and appears to have occupied a central role in the ritualistic life of the

32
Eksell 2002:172

33
Macdonald 2006: 293.
34
I have omitted the genealogies, which can be quite lengthy, of most of the inscription cited in the next sections for
the sake of space.

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nomads.35 G. Ryckmans36 produced an article-length study of the phenomenon in

Safaitic, but since then many new texts have appeared and so it is worth revisiting
the subject here in detail.
The sacrifice of animals was often connected to prayers and seems to have been
intended to motivate the gods to respond to their worshippers.37 Animal sacrifice
was practiced widely in the Ancient Near East and in Classical Antiquity, and seems
to have continued into Late Antiquity in Arabia, eventually being incorporated into
Islamic practice.38
The primary verb signifying this rite was ḏbḥ, which continues to be used in Arabic
today and which finds cognates across the Semitic language family.39 Inscriptions
occasionally employ other verbs, perhaps referring to different types of sacrifices:
ṣmy (KRS 68), hrq (AAEK 9).40 None of the inscriptions that attest this rite are
accompanied by any information as to what was done with the corpse following the
animal’s destruction. Occasional attestations of terms for ‘burnt offering’ (see
below) suggest that immolation of the animal, or at least part of its corpse, sometimes
followed.
The most basic commemoration of the sacrifice is accomplished with the verb ḏbḥ
in the narrative section of the inscription, often, but not necessarily, followed by a
prayer. Sometimes authors will mention to which specific deity an animal was
slaughtered and others might note its purpose.

35
According to OCIANA (accessed 06/03/2021), there are 93 occurrences of the verb ḏbḥ, to which we may add a
handful of other reference to sacrifice using synonyms.
36
Ryckmans 1950-1951.
37
A related function is attested in South Arabia; sacrifice was meant to produce a ‘divine response’ through an oracle
(Hoyland 2001: 154).
38
For an outline of sacrifice in Antiquity, see Ekroth (2014). On sacrifice in the religions of ancient Canaan and Israel,
see Nakhai (2001), and across South Arabia as well, see J. Ryckmans 1993; Robin 2012, §2d. Sacrifice figures
prominently in literary accounts of pre-Islamic Arabian religion (Hoyland 2001: 162-166).
39
Canaanite zbḥ, Aramaic dbḥ, Ugaritic dbḥ (DNWSI, 301-302). Ancient South Arabian ḏbḥ (Beeston et al. 1982:
37-38).
40
SafDict, 66, 78b. The verb hrq, whose Classical Arabic cognate means ‘to pour’, could reflect a sacrifice and
libation.

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C 4410, 4409 = LP 894 = Mr.A 5

w ḏbḥ l-bʿlsmn

‘and he made an animal sacrifice to Baʿal-Samīn’

Whenever an animal is specified, it is a camel. If this is not simply an accident of

attestation, it could suggest that the sacrifice of such a valuable and culturally
important beast merited explicit mention in the texts.41 None of the inscriptions so
far discovered indicate that the sacrifice required the officiation of a priest – if we
take the texts at face value, the rite was performed by the worshipper directly as an
individual act of devotion or involving a small number of people (see §2.1.3).42
Texts commemorating sacrifice are often followed by prayers: requests for security,
successful raiding, the return of lost loved ones, or to simply improve the condition
of the author.
AbWS 8
w ḏbḥ l-gdḍf wqyt m-bʾs

‘and he made an animal sacrifice to Gadd-Ḍayf to be protected from

misfortune’

MA.1
w ḏbḥ {l-}rḍy w ġnm nqt

‘and he made an animal sacrifice to Roḍay so may he obtain a she-camel as

spoil’

KRS 756
w ḏbḥ f h śʿhqm slm [m] ʿl- h- ʾbl mtʿt l- mdbr

‘and he made an animal sacrifice so O Shayʿhaqqawm, keep secure what is

upon the camels, provisions for the inner desert’

41
Camel sacrifice is common in the Book of Idols, e.g. the tale of the idol Saʿd (ibn al-Kalbī 1913: 37) and also the
account of Ṣāliḥ Q 26: 155-157.
42
Ryckmans 1950-51: 435-436.

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AHS 10
w ḏbḥ w ḫrṣ dd-h ʾsr f h gdḍf rwḥ

‘and he made an animal sacrifice and kept watch for his paternal uncle, who
was taken prison so, O Gadd-Ḍayf, send relief’

RWQ 315
w ḏbḥ w ḥḏr

‘he sacrificed because he was weary’

2.1.1 Sacrifice before/during dangerous activities

Several inscriptions record the performance of sacrifice before embarking on a raid
or journey. It seems that in these cases, the sacrifice was meant to ensure divine
protection during activities involving danger and uncertainty. HH 1, for example, is
by a man charged with keeping watch while his companions set off to raid. He takes
his position and performs a sacrifice for the successful outcome of his raiding party’s
enterprise.

HH 143
w n{ṣ}b w ḏbḥ w ḥll w ḫrṣ {ʾ}śyʿ-h ḍbʾn f h lt w dśr [s][l]m w qb{l}{l} {f} {h}
{l}t {r}w[ḥ] w {ġ}nmt

‘and he erected a cult stone and made an animal sacrifice, then encamped and
kept watch for his companions who were on a raid, and so O Allāt and Dusares
[grant] {security}, and {a reunion of loved ones} {and then} {O} {Allāt}
[grant] {relief} and {booty}

The author of AbSWS 11 makes a sacrifice while taking part in a rebellion, which
has separated him from his companions. He invokes the god Shayʿhaqqawm to grant
a safe reunion with loved ones.

43
This is my interpretation as discussed in Al-Jallad 2017; Hayajneh (2016) suggests the understanding of ḥll as “to
return to a profane condition”.

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AbSWS 11
w ḏbḥ w mrd f tśwq ʾl-ʾśyʿ-h f h śʿhqm qbll ʾslm

‘and he made an animal sacrifice and took part in the rebellion and longed
for his companions so O Shayʿhaqqawm, may there be a safe reunion’

2.1.2 Seasonal Sacrifices

The performance of a sacrifice is sometimes connected with the transition of seasons
and migration. The rite was perhaps meant to influence the gods to provide favorable
meteorological and environmental conditions, and protection during journeys. Some
inscriptions, such as C 860, suggest that a sacrifice could be made to improve
seasonal circumstances as well.

Al-Namārah.M 5844
w ḏbḥ <<>> f h-dr {l-}śʿhqm {w}-drbt mʿ-h f slm w dṯʾ snt {ʾ}{m}{r}{t} ṣfrṣ
h-mdnt

‘and he made an animal sacrifice in this place to Shayʿhaqqawm … so may

he be secure while he spends the season of the later rains the year Severus
took control of the province’.

RWQ 307
w ḏbḥ w dṯʾ

‘and he made an animal sacrifice and spent the season of the later rains
(here)’

AWS 279
w ḏbḥ w ʾśrq f h gdʿwḏ w h dśr slm w mgdt

‘and he made an animal sacrifice and then set off for the inner desert so, O
Gadd-ʿAwīḏ and Dusares, may there be security and abundance’

C 860
w ḏbḥ f h gdʿwḏ slm w trd f rmd bqr snt ʾty ʾ-ṣf qr

44
This is my reading and interpretation; the editio princeps (OCIANA) read the dating formula as s¹nt
{ʾ/k}{k}{r}{ḫ}ṣfrṣ h-mdnt and does not provide an interpretation.

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‘and he made an animal sacrifice so O Gadd-ʿAwīḏ may he be secure and

have bounty as the cattle froze the year the cold came during the early
summer’

2.1.3 Location of Sacrifice: the ṣamd

The inscriptions discussed above clearly show that sacrifices did not need to be
performed at temples (on which see below).45 Rather, animals were slaughtered in
the Ḥarrah itself. Yet, not all places were equal. Ababneh and Harahseh document a
fascinating site called Tell al-Rāhib, in northeastern Jordan.46 On the summit of this
imposing hill was a cairn, the eastern wall of which contained fifty-three
inscriptions. Twenty-three of these commemorated animal sacrifices. It is
impossible to know if these were all produced at the same time, but such a high
concentration of sacrifice texts in one place suggests that the site was of ritualistic
importance. This phenomenon finds parallels across Near Eastern traditions, most
clearly the bāmâ “high place” of the Hebrew Bible, which was also associated with
animal sacrifice and other religious rites.47

Tell al-Rāhib (picture by Ababneh and Harahshe 2015).

45
Ryckmans 1950-51: 436.
46
Ababneh & Harahsheh 2015.
47
See, for example, 1 Sam 9 12-14; Kings 3:4; 11:17. For a discussion of the High Place and the sacrality of landscape,
see Eksell 133-137; see also Healey (2001: 73) on the role of high places in Nabataean religion. On the distribution
of the inscriptions and rock art, see Macdonald 1992b; Brusgaard 2019, ch.6.

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Summit of Tell al-Rāhib (courtesy Ali al-Manaser)

Another site provides us the name of the high place in Safaitic. Two authors – a
father and son – record sacrificing a camel at a ṣmd, which appears to correspond to
Classical Arabic ṣamdun ‘high ground’.48
KRS 818
l wdmʾl bn grmʾl bn nḫr bn ġrb h-ṣmd w ḏbḥ gml ʿl-h f slm yṯʿ m-śnʾ w ʿwr
m ʿwr h-ʾsfr

‘By Wdmʾl son of Grmʾl son of Nḫr son of Ġrb, at the high ground, and he
sacrificed a camel upon it so, O Yayṯaʿ, grant security from enemies and
blind whosoever effaces these writings’

KRS 824
l qdmʾl bn wdmʾl bn grmʾl bn nḫr bn ġrb bn slm h-ṣmd ḏbḥ gml

‘By Qdmʾl son of Wdmʾl son of Grmʾl son of Nḫr son of Ġrb son of Slm,
who sacrificed a camel at the high ground’

48
SafDict, 129a.

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But “high” is relative and not all ṣmd’s were at such imposing places in the landscape
as Tell al-Rāhib. The following image is of another ṣmd – mentioned in an
inscription. It is not on a very tall hill, but simply high relative to the wādī before it.

Image of a ṣmd (by Ahmad Al-Jallad).

2.1.4 Thanksgiving?
While appears that sacrifice was intended increase the effectiveness of an invocation,
that may not have been its only purpose. Several inscriptions record a sacrifice to a
deity followed by a prayer to another, implying that the ritual was performed out of
obligation – perhaps in thanksgiving – rather than to obtain some future favor.49

49
Thanksgiving sacrifices are recorded in South Arabia as well (J. Ryckmans 1993;’Hoyland 2001: 154; Robin 2012,
§2d.) and the ʿAqīqah sacrificed performed by Muslims today on the occasion of the birth of a child can be understood
along these lines as well.

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AH 9
w ḏbḥ l-gdḍf f h lt slm w mgdt

‘and he made an animal sacrifice for Gadd-Ḍayf so O Allāt, may he be

secure and have abundance’

2.2 Erection of the nṣb stone

At least one installation is associated with the performance of the animal sacrifice:
the nṣb (and other variations thereof), conventionally translated as a ‘cult stone’.
This would seem to correspond to the standing stones and altars of the Bible, the
maṣṣēbôt.50 The Quran associates the nuṣub and ʾanṣāb with sacrifice explicitly.

Q 5:3
wa-mā ʾakala s-sabuʿu ʾillā mā ḏakkaytum wa-mā ḏubiḥa ʿalā n-nuṣub

‘(forbidden is) what the predator has eaten save for that which you have
purified and (forbidden is) what was slaughtered on the stone altar’

Hoyland connects this Quranic reference to sacrifices before stone idols in pre-
Islamic poetry and in the South Arabian inscriptions.51 Ibn al-Kalbī describes the
naṣb as an act of erecting an idol or stone representation of a divinity.52
The nṣb of the Safaitic inscriptions resembles Biblical and Arabian traditions as
mentioned in the Quran and later sources rather than functioning as a funerary stele,
which is what the word appears to mean in South Arabia and in Old Aramaic.
Nabataean attests several forms of this word, nṣybʾ, nṣbtʾ and mṣbʾ, which all signify
a cult stele of the deity, a beytl.53

50
The substantive nṣb is attested throughout West Semitic, where it refers generally to a stele, usually funerary, see
DNWSI, 750. In Ancient South Arabian, nṣb also has a funerary function (SD, 99).
51
Hoyland 2001: 186.
52
Ibn al-Kalbī 1913 (ed.): 8; see also Wellhausen 1897:101. Littmann 1943: 56 interprets this phrase as setting up a
statue for the god, but it seems more likely that the deity was represented by a natural, unworked stone. See also Al-
Azmeh 2014: 214.
53
Healey 2001: 156.

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When nṣb and ḏbḥ co-occur, nṣb always precedes, suggesting that the structure had
to be in place to fulfill the sacrificial rite, as illustrated in HH1 above, nṣb w ḏbḥ ‘he
set up a cult stone and made a sacrifice’.54 The sequence repeats below.
JaS 100.1 9 miles w. of ʿArʿar)
l bgt bn ʿdy bn lśms w nṣb w ḏbḥ

‘By Bgt son of ʿdy son of Lśms and he set up a cult stone and performed an
animal sacrifice’

Several inscriptions record the erection of nṣb stones without mentioning a sacrifice
or any other associated ritual or deity. It is possible the simple mentioning of this
installation implied a sacrifice, which would mean that such text commemorate the
same ritual as the ḏbḥ ones. On the other hand, the comparative evidence provides
several other possibilities, such as libations, the taking of oaths, or simply to
commemorate an interaction with a divinity.55 Like the ḏbḥ inscriptions, nṣb ones
can be followed by a prayer.

C 527
l mfny bn mśʿr h-nṣb f yṯʿ flṭ mn-sqm

‘This cult stone (was erected) by Mfny son of Mśʿr so O Yayṯaʿ, deliver
from illness’

KRS 929
l ʾnʿm bn hnʾ w ʾḫḏ w nṣb f h dśr slm

‘By ʾnʿm son of Hnʾ and he made a burial and erected a cult stone so O
Dusares may he be secure’

Authors sometimes mention the deity for whom the cult stone was erected but this
does not seem to have been a requirement for the genre. Like the ḏbḥ texts, the
erection of the cult stone can commemorate, or be in thanksgiving of, a previous
interaction with or boon provided by the deity. 56 In RQ.A 9, for example, the author

54
This might be compared to the sacrificial altars in South Arabia; see Maraqten (2021: 452-456).
55
Nakhai 2001: 49.
56
See Macdonald et al. (1996: 456) for further discussion.

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erects the cult stone for ʾAllāt but then calls upon Gadd-ʿAwīḏ to protect him and
the writing.

LP 23757
w nṣb h-lt f lt slm snt {g}lḥ h-ḏʾb ʾns w nqʾt l-ḏ yʿwr h-sfr

‘and he erected the cult stone for Allāt so O Allāt may he be secure the year
the wolf attacked mankind and may he who would efface this writing be
thrown out (of the grave)’

RQ.A 9
w dṯʾ h-wrd w nṣb ʾlt dṯn f h gdʿwḏ slm w l-h h-ḫṭṭ

‘and he spent the season of the later rains in the lowland/watering place and
erected a cult stone for the goddess of Dṯn so O Gadd-ʿAwīḏ may he be
secure, and these carvings are his’

A variant of this installation is known, manṣeb, maṣṣeb and maṣṣebat. These could
refer to the cult stone itself, the cleared-out area in which they were erected, or the
sacral installation in its entirety. This form is directly compatible with the Biblical
maṣṣēbâ < *manṣibat and Nabataean mṣbʾ.58

ZeGA 1
l gfft bn kn ḏ-ʾl ʾty w l-h mnṣb f h ʾlh slm

‘By Gfft son of Kn of the lineage of ʾty and this cult-stone was set up by him
so O Allāh, may he be secure’

57
Littmann interprets this strange dating formula to refer to a drought (1943: 56). Note the similar wording of the
narrative in SG 1, which may refer to the same event: SG 1: ṭrd h-ḏʾb ẓlʿ m-mn ʿkd yglḥ ‘he drove away the wolf,
which was seeking to mate, from Mn after it attacked’ (SafDict, 71). In light of the latter inscription, it seems more
likely that the “wolf” refers to some marauding group rather than a drought. The h preceding the first lt could be a
writing error as the name is usually preceded by the vocative, or it could reflect a variant pronunciation, hallāt. One
might suggest that the two spellings in this text, lt and hlt, should be regarded as separate deities, but as far as I know,
this is the only occurrence of hlt outside a vocative context. Thus, I think it is better to explain it as a writing or
phonetic variant rather than a separate deity.

58
Compare also with Classical Arabic manṣibun and modern Arabic manṣab, both meaning ‘a place where something
is planted’ or ‘rank’, ‘office’.

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C 3097
l śqr bn hggt h-mṣbt w ngb

‘This cult-stone was (set up) by Śqr son of Ḥggt so may he be rewarded’

KRS 3250
l zmhr bn kbr h-mṣbn

‘these two cult-stones were (set up) by Zmhr son of Kbr’

HNSD 196
l ʿbn bn wsmt h-mṣb

‘This cult-stone was (set up) by ʿbn son of Wsmt’

2.2.1 Statues
A single inscription appears to attest the offering of an image, ṣlm, as a means to
obtain security from impending doom.59 The text beings with mn ‘from’ rather than
the l that begins most texts,60 suggesting that the this was indeed a votive object.

RSIS 309
mn nśbt bn ʿgr h-ṣlm w tẓr mny w yṯʿ rwḥ

‘This statue is from (set up by) Nśbt son of ʿgr and Fate lay in wait so O
Yayṯaʿ send relief’

2.3 The Pilgrimage

Pilgrimages to the shrines of deities and the celebration of annual festivals are
attested throughout the ancient Near East.61 The pilgrimage was called ḥg in Safaitic
and its verbal counterpart as ḥgg / yḥg. Inscriptions mentioning this rite are few as it

This word is cognate with Classical Arabic ṣanam; see SafDict 129a. This term, ṣlmʾ, is much more common in
59

Nabataean as a votive object (Healey 2001: 159).

60
The introductory l is called the lām auctōris and is usually translated as ‘by’ but can often mean ‘for’, as in the
case of grave inscriptions; see Macdonald 2006 for a discussion.

61
See the chapters in McCorriston (2011). For Arabian pilgrimages, see Maraqten (2021 and 2015) on the pilgrimage
to the temple of Awām at Maʾrib, Yemen; Al-Ghul (1984) discusses the pilgrimage to Itwat. On pilgrimages in the
Hebrew Bible and in the archaeological record, see Nakhai 2001.

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seems that the pilgrimage sites were not located in the Ḥarrah – or at least none have
so far been discovered. There are, therefore, no texts commemorating the rites
performed on the pilgrimage itself; instead, the event is mentioned as a chronological
anchor in dating formulae. One text commemorates the embarking on the pilgrimage
itself.
Al-Mafraq Museum 24
w ḥgg snt myt mnʿt bn rḍwt w ḫrṣ ʿl-ʾhl-h f h lt w dśr slm w qbll

‘and he set off on the pilgrimage the year Mnʿt son of Rḍwt died and he kept
watch for his family so O Allāt and Dusares, may he be secure and be reunited
(with loved ones)’

The author’s prayer for reunification qbll62 is usually associated with verbs of motion
and being distant from loved ones. This would imply that the pilgrimage took our
author far away from his home and relatives; the performance of the pilgrimage does
not seem to have included an entire tribe or family.

2.3.1 Time period of the pilgrimage

In the ancient Levant and in South Arabia, pilgrimages were performed at set times
in the cultic calendar.63 Since the little information we have suggests that the nomads
made pilgrimages to shrines in settled lands (see below), they would have followed
the cultic calendars associated with those sanctuaries. But nothing would have
prevented the authors of the Safaitic inscriptions from participating in the pilgrimage
rites of various neighboring communities and cult-sites, and therefore we cannot
know if the attestations of ḥgg referred to a single, annual event.
Two inscriptions provide chronological information regarding the pilgrimage. The
first is KnGQ 4:

62
SafDict 109a.

63
The pilgrimage to Awām seems to have taken place sometime in February-March (Maraqten 2021: 452); the
Sabaean month ḏ-mḥgtn further indicates that the pilgrimage was to take place at a fixed time of the year. In North
Arabia as well, spring festivals appear to have been observed (Healey 2001: 161; Wellhausen 1897: 79-101). The
Bible records the celebration of an annual pilgrimage for Yahweh. The annual pilgrimage of pre-Islamic times
continues into Islamic practice at Mecca, which takes place from the 8th to the 12th or 13th of the month ḏū l-ḥiǧǧah.
On the Muslim pilgrimage, see Peters 1994.

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KnGQ 4 = AGQ 1
l ʾgrd bn fdy w ṣyr b-ḥg

‘By ʾgrd son of Fdy and he returned to water during the pilgrimage (period)’

Since the return to permanent water – which is what the verb ṣyr signifies – normally
occurred in the period of ṣyf or beginning of qyẓ, it is possible that the change of
seasons was celebrated with a pilgrimage to a shrine.64
The next text is WH 1771, which configures the ḥg with a calendrical period.
WH1771
l dʾy bn nśl w rḥḍ b-h-ngm l-yḥg
‘By Dʾy son of Nśl and he ritually cleansed during Virgo to perform a
pilgrimage’

We cannot be certain whether the author was referring to the dawn or evening rising
of ngm. Its dawn rising would have occurred in late August before the arrival of the
Wasmī rains. Perhaps, then, the performance of the pilgrimage was connected to
rituals of rain making, ensuring that the precipitation would arrive on time and be
sufficient. On the other hand, if WH 1771 and KnGQ 4 = AGQ 1 refer to the same
period, then we could suppose an evening setting of Ngm.65

2.3.2 Pilgrimage sites

Only one inscription BRenv.a 1, discovered in the region of al-Suwaydah, Syria,
gives the name of a pilgrimage site, sʿʿ, that is Seʿīʿ/Seia (mod. Sīʿ), which is located
about 3km SE of Kanatha (Qanawat), a city of the Decapolis. This site was home to
a sanctuary of Baʿal-Samīn, the storm god, which was constructed between the 1st c.
BCE to the 2nd c. CE, first by the Nabataeans and then renovated by the Romans

64
The seasons of ṣyf likely began in mid-April and stretched to June; during this period, depending on the year, there
would have been herbage remaining from the seasons of the later rains, dṯʾ, and surface water as well. During qyẓ, the
desert would have been hostile, lacking water and herbage and pastoralists. See Macdonald 2020 and 1992c.
65
See Al-Jallad 2014 and 2016 on the Safaitic parapegma.

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once they annexed the region. Indeed, the site is identified with Baʿal-Samīn in the
inscription CSNS 424 and a focus of pilgrimage in his honor.66

BRenv.a 1
l qʿṣn bn s{l}y bn qʿṣn bn ḫlṣ bn nhb ḏ-ʾl dʾf w ngy n[[]]fr snt bṭl ḥg sʿʿ
‘By Qʿṣn son of {Sly} son of Qʿṣn son of ḫlṣ son of Nhb of the lineage of
Dʾf and he escaped {by fleeing} the year the pilgrimage to Sʿʿ failed’

It is impossible to know from such evidence what bṭl exactly meant.67 Was this a
seasonal pilgrimage intended to ensure the coming of rains? And did its failure mean
that the nomads of the Ḥarrah suffered drought that year, as suggested by Macdonald
et al.?68 Drought is a common theme in dating formulae and so it is possible that this
was simply a creative way of dating one’s text to a year with little rain. But perhaps
bṭl meant that our author and his group could not make it the temple that year, maybe
on account of war or the closure of the temple itself, which seems to have happened
sometime before the 4th c. CE. Another inscription related to Seʿīʿ suggests the latter
possibility. It too is meteorological.

Is.M 198
l ḍb bn sḫr bn ʿbd bn ʾdm w tẓr h-smy w ṣlf h-{m}l snt brḥ h-ʾṣlm sʿʿ {f} h lt
slm {w}
“By Ḍb son of Sḫr son of ʿbd son of ʾdm and he kept watch for the rains and
the livestock grew thin the year the images were removed from Sʿʿ so O
Allāt, may he be secure”

66
Healey 2001:65. We do not have the name of the temple in Safaitic, but in a Hismaic text from Wadi Ram, the
temple of Allāt there is called bt lt, that is, bayt allāt. A similar term for the temple is used in South Arabia as well;
see Robin 2012: 19-20, and in the Quran, e.g. 22:26.
67
For a thorough etymological discussion of this root, see Prioletta and Hull 2020.
68
Macdonald, Muazzin and Nehmé 1996: 463 and n. 77.

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Could both texts be dated to the same year and reference the same drought? Could
the bṭl of BRenv.a 1therefore refer to the failure to complete the pilgrimage because
temple was closed, which incidentally happened during a year of drought, allowing
the nomads to assume a causal relationship between the two events?69 Whatever the
case, the link between pilgrimage and favorable meteorological conditions is
strongly implied.

2.4 Ritual Purity

Two verbs of ritual cleansing are attested, rḥḍ ‘to wash’ and ṭhr ‘to purify’.70
The rḥḍ ritual is performed before embarking on a pilgrimage (see WH1771 above)
and so presumably places one in a state of ritual purity. Ritual purity is observed
before entering temples in the Sabaic inscriptions, making use of the verb rḥḍ as
well.71 This custom continues into the Muslim pilgrimage, which requires the
observer to enter a state of ritual purity, ʾiḥrām.
Ritual ablution seems to have been required before engaging in other rites, like
mourning. The author of KRS 2415 performs rḥḍ before stopping at a funerary
cairn.72 Indeed, the building of cairns is closely associated with the maṣṣēbâ in the
Bible, although the two have not yet occurred together in the Safaitic inscriptions.73
KRS 2415
l gfft bn nʿrt w rḥḍ f gls ʾ-rgm

‘By Gfft son of Nʿrt and he washed and then stopped at the cairn’

69
Four pedestals at the site supported statues, one of which was of Herod the Great, and two reliefs of Mithra were
recovered from the site and are now housed at the Damascus museum;
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0006:entry%3Dseia.
70
SafDict, 117a, 137a-b.
71
Maraqten 2021: 448.
72
The rgm cairn seems to have had a funerary function as almost all details about the structure suggest (SafDict 115).
Another term for a cairn is ṣwy 130.
73
Nakhai (2001: 44); Gen 31:43–54, where Laban and Jacob set up a maṣṣēbâ and then a gal, a pile of stones. The
terms gl and glt (WH 1873 and KWQ 37, respectively) are attested in Safaitic, which are treated neutrally in the
SafDict as ‘stone’. But I would cautiously suggest interpreting it as a type of cairn, cognate with the Hebrew gal and
Syriac gallā, ‘a heap of stones.’

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There are several other occurrences of the verb rḥḍ, but the inscriptions give us no
specific information as to the purpose of ablution. Perhaps the most interesting of
this category is C 4443, a long mourning inscription detailing both sacred and
seemingly profane activities. After grieving for several lost loved ones, including
those murdered by an enemy tribe, he records pasturing and then washing during
ṯbr, a time period, perhaps Sagittarius, and then keeping watch for the enemy.

C 4443
w wgm ʿl-ʾm-h w ʿl- dd -h w ʿl- ḫl -h w ʿl- ʿm w ʿl- ʾnʿm qtl -h {ʾ}l ṣbḥ f wlh
ʿl- bn ḫl -h trḥ w rʿy h- ḍʾn w rḥḍ b- ṯbr w ḫl -h ś[n]ʾ f h lt slm w wgd ʾṯr ʾḫ -
h f ndm

‘and he grieved for his mother and his paternal uncle and his maternal uncle
and ʿAmm and ʾAnʿam, who the line of Ṣabāḥ murdered, and he was
distraught with grief for the son of his maternal uncle, who had perished, and
he pastured the sheep and washed during Ṯbr (Sagittarius) and kept watch for
enemies so O Allāt, may he be secure and he found the traces of his brother
and was devastated by grief’

Other inscriptions record the performance of ritual wash, with no further

information. These can be compared to the simple ḏbḥ inscriptions, a
commemoration of a ritualistic act which would have been clearly understood by its
author and original audience.

MKWS 2174
l qnʾl bn ʾrśt w {r}ḥḍ

‘By Qnʾl son of ʾrśt and he washed’

Is.H 641
l śgʾ bn śrk bn śdd w [[.]] rḥḍ b-wqʿt grmʾl

By Śgʾ son of Śrk son of Śdd and he washed in the pool [ ] of Grmʾl [ ]

74
OCIANA understands rḥḍ as ‘to sweat with a fever’, no doubt a specialized meaning in Classical Arabic resulting
from the replacement of the verb with the more common root ġsl.

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The verb ṭhr is attested only once but in a clearly ritualistic context.75 The author of
MA 1 performs ṭhr to enter a state of ritual purity in order to perform an animal
sacrifice to Rḍy. While it is unclear what actions ṭhr would entail, both it and rḥḍ
appear to imply the requirement of a shift from the profane to the sacred to perform
religious rituals.76

MA 1
w ṭhr w ḏbḥ {l-}rḍy w ġnm nqt

‘and he entered into a state of ritual purity and made an animal sacrifice to
Roḍay so may he gain a she-camel as spoil’

2.5 Offerings
The inscriptions record several other types offerings to the gods, but these are less
frequently attested than the ḏbḥ-rite.77 The texts simply register the performance of
the offering and petitions to the gods, but do not provide any further contextual
evidence. At face value, they too appear to be personal acts of devotion.

2.5.1 Unspecified offerings

Several other verbs are used to signify a presentation of an offering to the gods,
qdm78, qrb,79qbl,80 and ntn.81 None of these attestations indicate what exactly was

75
This is the primary verb used to express ritual purity in the Quran, Biblical Hebrew, and is attested in Sabaic as well
(Maraqten 2021: 447-448; SD 153).
76
The rules for the performance of sacrifices in the Hebrew Bible, including matters of ritual purity, can be found in
Leviticus 1-7; on this, see Anderson 1992a-b. The Ugaritic texts, however, do not exhibit a concern for purity with
regard to sacrifices (Nakhai 2001: 72).
77
For an overview of the types of offerings made in pre-Islamic Arabia, see Hoyland 163-166.
78
Classical Arabic qaddama ‘to place before’, ‘to offer’.
79
Aramaic qurbānā ‘sacrifice’, and in the D-stem ‘to offer, dedicate’; DNWSI 1028-1030.
80
Perhaps qabbala ‘to cause to receive’, cf. Classical Arabic G-stem qabala ‘to receive’.
81
Canaanite ntn, Hebrew nāṯān ‘to give’.

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offered, but that they were intended to bring relief to those suffering from strait
circumstances is made clear by the prayers following them.

MNSA 2
qdm f h lt slm
‘he made an offering so, O Lt, may he be secure’

H 2411
qrb brkt w ʾḫs f nʿm snt bʿlsmy
‘he made an offering at Brkt because he was suffering from scarcity
so may Bʿlsmy show grace (this) year’

C 1581
w qrb

‘and he made an offering’

KRS 1836
h bʿlsmn ḥlmt m-ḏ qbl

‘O Bʿlsmn, may that which he has offered bring forbearance’

WH 1731
ʿny w ntn

‘he suffered and so made an offering’

2.5.2 Burnt offerings and libations

Immolation of the sacrificed animal’s corpse was an important sacrifice type in the
Hebrew Bible, there called ʿôlâ ‘that which goes up (in smoke)’.82 The practice is
attested at Ugarit as well with the verb, šrp.83 Three verbs associated with the burnt
offering occur in Safaitic: ʾsly, ʾsrf and ṣʿd.84

82
See for example Exodus 20:20.
83
Nakhai (2000: 42); ‘to burn by fire’ DNWSI 1194.
84
The verb sbʾ was suggested to have this meaning in the SafDict, but it seems more likely to me now that it should
be interpreted as a simple verb of movement, compare with Sabaic sbʾ ‘to undertake an expedition’ (SD 122) and

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The burnt offering in SIJ 293 precedes an oath and could be a way to guarantee the
fulfilment of it.
SIJ 29385
ʾṣly w ʾqsm b-ʾlh ḥy l-hdy ʿẓm
‘he made a burnt offering and swore by Allāh, who is living, that he will
lead with bravery’

BS 456
l PN w ʾsrf

‘by PN and he made a burnt offering’

The verb ṣʿd was suggested by Winnett to signify a burnt offering as well, which
would be the Arabic equivalent of ʿôlâ. It is attested only twice in an unclear context
and so it could possibly refer to a feature of the landscape as well.

ASFF 456
w ṣʿd

‘and he made a burnt offering’ (?)

WH 604.1
l PN h-ṣʿdt

‘by PN is this burnt offering’ (?)

The libation is perhaps only attested once in the inscriptions, with no explicit
connection to the sacrifice nor mention of the type of liquid poured out.86

Classical Arabic subʾatun ‘a long journey’ (Lane, 1287a). Thus, HASI 24 would read w sbʾ m-ḥrn w ḫyṭ f ʾmgd w ʾḫlṣ
‘he set off on a long journey from the Ḥawrān and travelled quickly so may he attain bounty and deliverance’
85
On the interpretation of this text, see Al-Jallad 2021b.
86
Numbers 28:6-7 indicates that libations accompany the twice-daily burnt offerings required of Israel; 1 Kings 18:33
records the pouring of a libation over the burnt offering.

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C 4454
l ḥml bn nśbt w ṣbb b-ksʾ {g}ml

‘By Ḥml son of Nśbt and he made a libation during the evening setting of
{Gemini}’

2.5.3 Images
Safaitic inscriptions often accompany images of desert life, from animals to raids
and festivals.87 The associated inscriptions often simply include the signature of the
artist, with the lām auctōris l-, signifying possession or authorship. On their own,
the interpretation of such carvings is difficult – scholars have suggested a range of
interpretations, from playful doodling to magico-sacral icons.88 A few inscriptions,
however, do suggest that such carvings could be a form of offering to a deity, perhaps
comparable to the offering of cultic objects among settled peoples, such as clay
figurines.89 Such drawings are accompanied by a verbal adjective qṣy ‘to dedicate’
followed by the name of a god.90

87
On the classification of rock art motifs and their distribution in the landscape, see Brusgaard 2019.
88
Compare Macdonald 2006 to Eksell 2002.
89
See Lacerenza 1988-89: 142-44.

90
Littmann (1943: 78) interpreted such texts as ‘bills of sale’, but there is no mention of the transfer of money and
property and it is hard to understand what function a public bill of sale on a rock in the middle of the desert would
serve. Ryckmans (1950-51: 436) suggests that these were drawings of animals dedicated to the gods, but given that
none of the other narrative components are accompanied by illustrations, I think this tips the scale of understanding
in favor of the carving itself being an offering.

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LP 317 = Is.M 92

(courtesy OCIANA)
l ḥr bn qnʾl bn qḥś bn ḥḍg h- nqt qṣyt l- nh{y}

‘By Ḥr son of Qnʾl son of Qḥś son of Ḥḍg is this she-camel, which has been
dedicated to Nhy’

KRS 1307

(courtesy OCIANA)_

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l ḫṭst bn skrn bn ḫṭst bn zkr h-gml qṣy l-śʿhqm

‘By Ḫṭst son of Skrn son of Ḫṭst son of Zkr is this camel, which has been
dedicated to Shayʿhaqqawm’

C 1658
l wq{r} bn yʿl h-gmln qṣyn l- ʾlt w l- rḍw f h yṯʿ ʿwr m ʿwr h- [ḫ]ṭṭ

‘By Wqr son of Yʿl are these two camels dedicated to ʾAllāt and Roḍaw, so
O Yayṯaʿ blind whosoever effaces these carvings’

It may be the case that the participle qṣy was optional, as the purpose of an image
was clear its original context, not requiring redundant written elaboration. Prayers
accompanying some signed rock art also open the possibility that they were votive
images.

ASFF 428
l rgl bn hmt bn ʿm bn mṯʿ bn ʿmd h-gml w tẓr h rḍw flṭ-h mn sḫl

‘By Rgl son of Hmt son of ʿm son of Mṯʿ son of ʿmd is this camel and he kept
watch; O Roḍaw deliver him from weakness’
And the mentioning of an image of a horseman with the verb nṣb and the
construction of a funerary installation suggests that the present drawing had a sacral
signification, perhaps an offering.

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BRCM 14

(courtesy OCIANA)
l ʾbḥt bn gls bn fśgt bn glḥn w nṣb w l-h [h-]frs w bny ʿl-ʾs

‘By ʾbḥt son of Gls son of Fśgt son of Glḥn and he set up a cult stone and
this (image of a horse) is by him and he built over ʾs’

2.6 Vows and Oaths

The verb nḏr – the common verb for taking a vow across Semitic – is attested only
once in KWQ 42; it may be significant that it occurs in the context of water.91

KWQ 42
l ʿzm bn mrʾt w nḏr ḥḍl
‘By ʿzm son of Mrʾt and he made a vow while camping by water’
The qsm oath (see SIJ 293 above) is also attested, cf. Quran 5:53. See the discussion
of this inscription above.

91
Northwest Semitic ndr/nzr (DNWSI 717-719); Hismaic nḏr (Graf and Zwettler 2004; Al-Jallad 2020); and
frequently in Dadanitic nḏr (Kootstra 2019; OCIANA for references).

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Finally, oaths of self-amputation are twice attested in the context of retribution. The
oath-taker offers to cut off his hand in promise of vengeance against those who have
wronged him.

C 25
wgd ʾṯr ʾḫ-h f wlh ʿl-h f hy lt w h śms ʾṭn ʾl-km yd-h l-ṯʾr m-ḏ ʾslf

‘he found the trace of his brother so he was distraught with grief for him, so,
O Lt and Śms, may he cut off his hand for you (in promise) that he will
indeed have vengeance against him who has committed this act’

AKSD 5
ṯqb yd-h w dśr ʿl-ksr wqʿ-n

‘may he cut off his (own) hand that Dśr be against any destroyer of our
inscription’

None of the texts provide information about other rituals accompanying such
oaths, such as the setting up of cairns, as attested in the Hebrew Bible.92

2.7 Sacred Water

One inscription seems to refer to a sacred water source associated with Baʿal-Samīn;
BESS19 1 records a so far unique invocation to the storm god.

BESS19 1
l rġḍ bn ġsm bn śḥl w ḫrṣ ʿl-ḥmlt sqm f h bʿlsmn ḥnn nqʿ-k f-yql ʾl-h ṣdq

‘By Rġḍ son of Ġsm son of Śḥl and he kept watch over Ḥlmt who had fallen
ill so O Bʿlsmn, show mercy though your water pools so that his folk will say
you are just’

The term nqʿ is attested for the first time here but a related word, augmented with
the feminine t, nqʿt, is attested several times as the goal of the verb of motion wrd,
‘to go to water’.93 This movement is often configured with periods in the rainy

92
Gen 31: 44-46; Jonah 1:16.
93
SafDict, 105b-106a.

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seasons, suggesting that the nqʿt was a place of permanent water to which the
nomads could go in times of drought. The present noun nqʿ could reflect a plural
‘water pools’ or perhaps a different derivative from the same root. Whatever the
case, the use of sacred water connected to a deity to alleviate illness is a well-attested
cross-cultural practice. In the Arabian context we may furnish two examples. The
first is a legend recounted by ibn al-Kalbī which goes as follows:94

It was al-Harith who used to be the custodian of the Ka'bah. But when 'Amr
ibn-Luhayy came [to Mecca] he disputed his right to its custody, and with the
aid of the children of Ishmael, fought the Jurhumites, defeated them, and
cleared them out of the Ka'bah; he then drove them out of Mecca, and took
over the custody of the Sacred House (al Bayt) after them. He then became
very sick, and was told, "There is a hot spring in al-Balqāʾ, in Syria (al-Sha'm);
if you would go there, you would be cured." So he went to the hot spring,
bathed therein, and was cured. During his stay there, he noticed that the
inhabitants of the place worshipped idols. He, therefore, queried them saying,
"What are these things?" To which they replied, "To them we pray for rain,
and from them we seek victory over the enemy." Thereupon he asked them to
give him [a few of those idols], and they did. He took them back with him to
Mecca and erected them around the Ka'bah. (trans. Faris 1952: 7)

While certainly not historical, it illustrates the trope of the healing power of waters
associated with gods. The second is the Zamzam well of Mecca, which Muslims
believe to have healing properties.95

3 Divinities and their Roles in the lives of Humans

The Safaitic-writing nomads worshipped a large number of gods, ones known only
locally and ones honored by neighboring peoples as well (see Appendix). The most
frequently invoked god in the inscriptions is Allāt, which has led many to assume
that she was the chief divinity of the Safaitic pantheon. Bennett produced a study of
the petitions made to the deities and showed that any of them could be asked to
respond to any type of prayer, although requests for security (slm) are the most
frequent.96 Thus, no individual or specialized role in the cosmos is apparent from the

94
I thank Mr. Asad Uz Zaman for bringing this connection to my attention.

95
For example, Sahih al-Bukhari 3261: Abū Ǧamrah al-Ḍubaʿī narrated: I used to sit with Ibn `Abbas in Mecca. Once
I had a fever and he said (to me), "Cool your fever with Zamzam water, for Allah's Messenger said: 'It, (the Fever) is
from the heat of the (Hell) Fire; so, cool it with water (or Zamzam water).
96
Bennett 2014.

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type of requests alone. But once we examine the contents of the inscriptions
holistically, it seems that at least some of the gods were connected with astral and
natural phenomena.97 In some cases, this is clear from the very name of the deity: C
25 invokes śms which is literally the ‘sun’; the inscription KRS 1941 perhaps refers
to the same deity by the epithet blg ‘radiant one’.98 Astral interpretations of other
deities are common but more difficult to substantiate (see below).

The existence of a kin-based pantheon comes from a small number of texts. A pair
of inscriptions from Wādī as-Sūʿ in the Suwaydah province of Syria indicate that the
goddess Allāt was the daughter of Ruḍaw.

AWS 283
h ʾlt bnt rḍw flṭ m-snt h-ḥrb flṭʾl bn ḫzr bn ḫḏy bn wkyt

‘O ʾAllāt daughter of Roḍaw deliver Flṭʾl son of Ḫzr son of Ḫḏy son of
Wkyt from this year of war’

AWS 291
h ʾlt {b}nt rḍw ġwṯ-h ḥld bn ḥḍrt bn ʾbrr w l-h h- dr

‘O ʾAllāt {daughter} of Roḍaw aid him, Ḥld son of Ḥḍrt son of ʾbrr and this
place is his’

Allāt was known by the epithet mlkt ṯry ‘sovereign of fertility’, possibly linking her
with the Venus/Aphrodite/Ishtar complex.99

MSSaf 6
h ʾlt mlkt ṯry sʿd bnʿm qsy bn zgr bn śrb w-rʿy bql w h rḍw mḥlt l-m-ʿwr
‘O Allāt, sovereign of abundance/fertility, help Bnʿm qsy son of Zgr son of
Śrb and he pastured on fresh herbage, and O Rḍw, may whosoever effaces
(this writing) experience a dearth of pasture’

97
On the astral signification of the South Arabian deities, see Robin 2012; see also Prioletta 2012; Beeston 1991.
98
The epithet is not identified on the OCIANA edition (accessed 12/3/2021); the text reads h blg sʿd ykfl bn ʿrh ‘O
radiant one, help Ykfl son of ʿrh’.

99
On the identification of ṯry as abundance/fertility rather than ‘the Pleiades’ see Al-Jallad 2021a.

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No epithet for Ruḍaw is known, but a single Dumaitic inscription calls him the one
‘from Chaldaea’.100 If we assume a similar mythological complex as other near
eastern traditions, the two could form an astral pair of father and daughter, where
Allāt is Venus and Roḍaw is the Moon.101

The god of rain and storm was Baʿal-Samīn, sometimes simply called Baʿal. Like
Allāt, he takes the epithet ‘sovereign’, namely, mlk h-smy ‘sovereign of the
rains/heaven’ (KRS 1944). The texts do not relate Baʿal-Samīn to Allāt or any other
deity explicitly. He is described as directly controlling the rains, withholding them
in bad years.

LP 722 = SG 1
ʿlf h-mʿzy snt bʾs w ḥgz-h bʿlsmn

‘he fed the goats on dry fodder the year of misery because Baʿal-Samīn
withheld it (i.e. the rain)’

C 1240
w ṣyr m-mdbr snt ḥgz-h bʿlsmn ʿl-h-mdnt w wrd h-mqẓt bdr f h lt slm w ʿwr
w ʿrg l- ḏ yʿwr h-ḫṭṭ

‘and he returned to permanent water from the inner desert the year Baʿal-
Samīn withheld it [i.e. rain] from the Province [or region]. And he watered
in the place where one spends the dry season during the days of the full
moon. So O Lt [grant] security and [inflict] blindness and lameness on
whoever may scratch out the carving’

He can dispatch the winds with rains and dozens of texts record desperate pleas in
times of drought for respite.102

ASWS 185
w rʿy h-ḍʾn f hy lt slm w tẓr h-smy f h bʿlsmn rwḥ b-mṭr

100
See Al-Jallad 2021a.
101
Idem. And on the suggestion that Ruḍaw was a lunar deity, see Knauf 1985:85. Others have made a connection
with Venus, but in light of newly discovered texts mentioned above, this seems unlikely.
102
Cf. Quran 30:48.

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‘and he pastured the sheep so O Allāt may he be secure; and he awaited the
rains so O Baʿal-Samīn send the winds with rain!’

While Baʿal-Samīn was chiefly responsible for the sending rains, when he failed
other deities could be called upon to provide relief.

C 4010
[w] [t]ẓ[r] h- {s}my w h lt r{w}ḥ m- ḏ bʾs-h

‘and he awaited the rains so O Allāt send relief from that which has caused
him affliction’

This phenomenon is clearly illustrated in the following inscription.

ASWS 37
w wgm m-dn bʿl f h rḍw rwḥ

‘and he grieved in the absence of Bʿl so O Ruḍaw, send relief/winds’

Bennett shows that the deity most often partnered with Allāt in invocations is
Dusares (dśr), the national deity of the Nabataeans.103 Unlike the case with Allāt and
Roḍaw, no inscription gives us the reason for this. The image is equally murky when
we turn our attention to the Nabataean material. Healey brings our attention to the
inscription CIS II 185 from Ṣalkhad (a city referenced in the Safaitic inscriptions
and in which Safaitic-writing people dwelt)104 which calls Allāt ʾm ʾlhyʾ dy mʾrnʾ
rbʾl ‘mother of the gods of our lord Rabb-ʾEl’ and suggests that a familial
relationship between the gods was possible. As Healey goes on to point out, Dusares
is explicitly called the ‘the god of our lord the king’ in another inscription implying
that Allāt was then his mother.105 If the same relationship held true in the Safaitic
context, then invocations to Allāt and Dusares would be to mother and son, and with
Roḍaw, we would have three generations of a divine family.

103
On Dśr see the Appendix and Healey 2001: 85-106.
104
See KRS 2813.
105
Healey 2001: 81; 86. See inscription CIS II, 350:3-4 on page 86.

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3.1 Location of the deities

The deities have three locative aspects. The first is the sky, which appears to be
where the gods assemble. A single text from the Northeastern Jordan invokes the
deities as such:

ZSIJ 16106
l ʾnʿm w tdy h lt w dśr w bʿlsmn w gdḥr…w gdnbṭ w w gdwhbʾl w kll ʾlh b-h-
smy…’
‘By ʾAnʿam and he called out: O Allāt, Dusares, Baʿal-Samīn, Gadd-Ḥr…,
Gadd-Nabaṭ, Gadd-Wahabʾel and every god in the heavens…’

In a few cases, writers invoke the gods in association with what appear to be their
mythological earthly residences. Allāt is twice called (the one) from ʿmn, a lost
location, but perhaps Jebel Ramm.107 Dusares is invoked in a similar manner, as (the
one) from Rqm, that is Petra.108 The third type of association is made using the
construct phrase ʾlh/ʾlt + toponym or tribe, e.g. ʾlh tm ‘the god of the tribe Taym’,
ʾlh ʾbgr ‘the god of Abgar (Edessa?), ʾlh g ‘the God of Gaia (the valley of Petra)’,
ʾlt dṯn ‘Goddess of Daṯan’. Occasionally the proper name of the gods is given along
with the locative epithet: ṣalm, who was worshipped at Taymāʾ in the mid-first
millennium BCE, was called ʾlh dmt ‘God of Dūmat’ in one text, 109 and the storm
god once as bʿlsmn ʾlh sʿʿ ‘Baʿal-Samīn, god of Sīʿ.110

3.2 The Gadds

Gadd is an ancient West Semitic deity, the deification of fortune, cf. Greek Tychē
and Latin Fortuna.111 Gadd does not occur on its own in Safaitic, but appears to be a
protective divinity associated with specific social groups, comparable to the ʾs2ms

106
The word tdy is new. It appears to be an T-stem of the root ndw, meaning ‘to call out’, perhaps ettadaya, compare
to the T-stem of nẓr, tẓr /ettaẓara/.
107
Jebel Ramm was home to a temple (bt) of Allāt as known from the Nabataean inscriptions there. A Hismaic text
published by Farès and Zayadine (1998) commemorates the construction of the temple of Allāt by the tribe of ʿd,
likely Quranic ʿād: w bny bt lt ḏ ʾl ʿd ‘and he helped construct the temple of Allāt of the lineage of ʿd’.
108
Al-Jallad 2020.
109
KRS 30.
110
CSNS 424.
111
DDD, 339-314; on the Gadds of the Safaitic-writing tribes, see Knauf 1985b.

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divinities of South Arabia.112 Teixidor argues that the Gadds of Palmyra and the
Ḥawrān personified the protection given by a god to specific individuals and
groups.113 The great tribal confederations of Ḍayf and ʿAwīḏ each have their own
Gadd, but so do outside nations, such as the Nabataeans (Gadd-Nabaṭ) and possibly
even the Romans (Gadd-har-Rūm).114 The Gadds are primarily called upon by
members of their social group but in principle anyone could invoke them. The
inscription C 2446 (given in section # below) recounts the murder of a man named
Saʿd’s brother at the hands of the Nabataeans while he was pasturing the livestock
of the tribes ʿAwīḏ and Ḍayf. He calls upon the gods for vengeance, mentioning the
Gadds of both tribes. One could suppose that these tutelary deities would be
especially responsive to calls for justice given that Saʿd’s brother died serving their
tribes.115

3.3 The gods and their worshippers

The gods were believed to play an active role in the lives of their worshippers, who
were called ʿbd ‘slave’, ‘worshipper’ and ṣdq ‘righteous one’ or perhaps
‘devotee’.116 General requests, such as for security (slm), relief (ryḥ/rwḥ),
deliverance (fṣy(t)/flṭ(t)), and protection from enemies or misfortune (śnʾ and bʾs,
respectively) are the most common and appear to be made of any deity writers hoped
to favor them. This type of prayer is most often connected to preceding narrative,
but isolated prayers are also found.

C 31
śtky ʾl-lt f ḥnn w slm m-śnʾ

‘he petitioned Allāt, so show compassion that he may be secure from

enemies’

KRS 1910
h yṯʿ sʿd ḫrʿ bn gml ʿl-ḏ wd

112
Robin 2012, §A2.
113
Teixidor 1979: 88-199.
114
This occurs in an unpublished text under investigation now.
115
Knauf 1985b.

116
Is.Mu 550 and ALS 1, respectively.

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‘O Yayṯaʿ, help Ḫrʿ son of Gml with whom he loves’

LP 495117
h rḍw flṭ-n m-bʾs w nḥyy

‘O Roḍaw, deliver us from misfortune that we may have long life’

WH 135118
l qny f h lt qbll ʾhl slm f nngy

‘By Qn so O Allāt, grant a safe reunion with family that we may be saved’

The faithful sought refuge in the gods and even put their carvings under their
protection, often using the verb ʿwḏ.119

ASFF 260
l qdmt bn hmśt w ʿwḏ b-rḍw

‘By Qdmt son of Hmśt and he sought refuge in Roḍaw’

KRS 32
ẓlʿ mṭy f ʾḏm b-śʿhqm

‘he developed a limp while journeying so he sought protection in

Shayʿhaqqawm’
AWS 380
w ʾʿḏ-h b-yṯʿ

‘and he placed it (the image) under the protection of Yayṯaʿ’

117
Compare with Matthew 6:13.
118
Compare with Q 26: 169.
119
Compare with Q 113 and 114, the so-called muʿawwiḏatān. SafDict, 56b,

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3.3.1 Travel
The gods were meant to provide safety during travels and migrations. As noted
earlier, the vast majority of sacrificial rites concern travel and the changing of
seasons.120

C 663
w mṭy tdmr f h lt slm

‘and he set off on a journey for Palmyra so Allāt may he be secure’

C 1664
w syr tdmr f h lt slm

‘and he set off for Palmyra so O Allāt may he be secure’

WH 1173
w ʾśrq f h gdḍf slm

‘and he set off for the inner desert so O Gadd-Ḍayf may he be secure’

C 823
w ʾśrq f h lt mʿdt

‘and he set off for the inner desert so O Allāt may there be a (safe) return’

3.3.2 Far from home and reunion

Gods had the power to reunite loved ones.

KRS 2018
śṭr f ḥnn ʾlh

‘he was distant (from family) so may ʾAllāh show compassion’

KRS 1834

120
These prayers recall Q 6:6:
qul man yunaǧǧī-kum min ẓulumāti l-barri wa-l-baḥri tadʿūna-hū taḍarruʿan wa-ḫufyatan laʾin ʾanǧā-nā min
hāḏihī la-nakūnanna mina š-šākirīn
‘Say: who delivers you from the perils of the land and sea; you call upon him in abject supplication and within the
heart : if he would deliver us from this then we will be forever grateful’

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w tẓr ʾhl-h mbʿd f h lt slm w qbll

‘and he kept watch for his family who were far so O Allāt, may he be secure
and be reunited (with them)’

3.3.3 Assistance and Justice

The gods could be invoked to intervene in difficult situations, for instance, to help
find lost animals and to grant boons. When humans fail to act fairly, they could
interfere and enact justice.

KRS 1715
fqd śwt h lt ʾgd-h
‘he lost (a) sheep, O Allāt, cause him to find it (them)’

SIJ 750
h lt ʾdb l-h wlm w ʾḫt-h rḫlt
‘O Allāt, grant him a feast and his sister a ewe-lamb’

KRS 306
h rḍw bdd-h m-ʾgrt-h
‘O Roḍaw, compensate him by means of his share of livestock’

KRS 1563
w tẓr ʾ-smy b-mlḥ ʿtq w ḫrṣ h-ḍf ʾgr f h rḍw bdd-h m-nʿm m-ʾgrt-h
‘he awaited the rains during Aquarius as a freeman and he acted as a guard
for the Ḍayf (tribe) as a hired man so O Roḍaw, compensate him for his
labor through livestock’

C 3212
h rḍw ṭʿmt w ġnmt bddt
‘O Roḍaw, nourish (him) and (grant) a share of spoil’

Related to this theme of justice is vengeance – the gods were often called upon to
give the opportunity to the wronged for retribution, nqmt and ṯʾr.121 Inscriptions of
this type sometimes detail the offence and often name the offender.

121
Cf. Ps. 58.

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SIJ 825
h rḍy nqmt m-lkm {b}n ṯb gr-h
O Roḍay, let there be vengeance upon Lkm son of Ṯb, his neighbor’

LP 460
h rḍw hb l-ʿbdʾl nqmt
‘O Roḍaw grant vengeance to ʿbdʾl’

C 2974
w ndm ʿl-ʾḫ-h mlṯ mqtl b-hld f h lt w dśr nqmt mn-mn mṣr-h
‘and he was devastated by grief for his brother Mṯl, who was murdered at
Hld so, O Allāt and Dusares, let there be vengeance upon the one who
attacked him’

C 1854
h rḍw nqmt m-{q}tl
‘O Rḍw, let there be vengeance upon murderers’

The expectation that the gods be just, responding to the correct performance of ritual
and prayers, is attested in BES19 1 above. The supplicant calls upon Baʿal-Samīn to
heal a sick man so that his people ʾl-h would say that the god is just, ṣadaqa.

The gods may also provide marshal assistance.

AbNH 1122
h dśr hb sʿd l-nbṭ ʿl-ḥwlt
‘O Dśr, grant aid to the Nabataeans against Ḥwlt’

LP 146
h lt w bʿlsmn śyʿ h-gś h-rdf f nqḏ
‘he camped in this place, then pastured the camels so, O Allāt and Baʿal-
Samīn, escort the rear guard that they may be safe’

SIJ 39
[w] mrd f h lt slm w nqmt m- ḏ ʾslf
‘and he took part in a rebellion so O Allāt, may he be secure and have
vengeance against those who committed wrong’

122
On this conflict, see Norris and al-Manaser 2017.

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They guided their worshippers through difficult situations, much like a guide would
through unknown territory. The same root ḫfr is used for both.123

HAUI 182 = Al-Mafraq Museum 25

h lt w gdʿwḏ w śʿhqm w dśr b-ḫfrt-k ʿwḏ-k

‘O Allāt and Gadd-ʿAwīḏ and Shayʿhaqqawm and Dusares, through your

guidance comes your protection’

KRS 68
h śʿhqm … b-ḫfrt-k fltn m-mt

‘O Shayʿhaqqawm…through your guidance comes deliverance from death’

3.3.4 Curing illness and prolonging life

Divine intervention can be sought for the removal of illness and preventative
protection from pestilence. As a result, the gods can lengthen the lives of the faithful,
but not permanently. ALS 1 resigns to this fact and after asking Allāt to give him
long life ʿammerī and to protect him gannenī, he admits – wa-mem-mawt laysa faṣāy
‘and from death there is no deliverance’.

C 3365
w rḍw ḥlw l-bny-h mn-sqm

‘O Roḍaw, cure his son(s) from illness’

C 4148
w rʿy h-mʿzy w wld f h ʾṯʿ slm ʾgd{-h} mn-sqm

‘And he pastured the goats and helped them to give birth so O ʾAyṯaʿ keep
his kids safe from illness’

123
Cf. Ps. 23. In the Quran, the term hudan is used for guidance. Its cognate in Safaitic hdy appears to do with
military leadership.

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BES17 1853
w ḫrṣ ʿl-hgr sqmt f h lt rwḥ m-sqm

‘and he kept watch over Hgr, who had fallen ill, so O Allāt, send relief from
illness’

KRS 1797
w ḥyw rḍw

‘may Roḍaw grant life’

Death was referred to by many terms, trḥ ‘to perish’, m(y)t ‘to die’, but one
euphemism foreshadows a Quranic metaphor – ‘to taste’.124

SHNS 4
w ḏwq ḫl-h f rṯy f rwḥ l-ḏ sʾr yṯʿ l-h w tẓr

‘and his maternal uncle tasted (death) and so he grieved; and so Yayṯaʿ send
relief those who remain (alive), to him and he kept watch’

3.4 Sin?
Unlike the South Arabian inscriptions and the Hismaic texts from the Madaba
region,125 the Safaitic inscriptions do not clearly record offenses against deities. But
a few texts suggest that certain actions caused an individual to enter a state of ritual
impurity. The word ḫṭʾ ‘to sin’ is attested in one text, but no details as to what the
author’s offences were are given.126

KRS 2604
w ḫṭʾ
‘and he did wrong’

The faithful make supplications to the deity and lament. Two related verbs appear in
this context - ḥbw and ḥwb. The latter is used in grieving contexts, but as Della Puppa
124
For example, Q 29:57.

125
On these South Arabian penitence texts, see Robin 1992; Kropp 2002, and on the North Arabian examples, see
Al-Jallad 2020a; these texts are discussed in Graf and Zwettler 2004, but they offer a different interpretation.
126
SafDict 82b, there translated neutrally as ‘to do wrong’.

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argues convincingly, when followed by the preposition ʾl-, it seems to refer to a

supplication or crying out.127 She goes on to identify the inscription WH 300 as a
caption next to a drawing of a woman with her arms raised to the heavens, perhaps
an illustration of the gesture of praying.

WH 300 (courtesy OCIANA)

WH 1629
l PN w ḥbw

‘by PN and he made a supplication’

BS 464
rḍy slm l-ḏ ḥby

‘O Rḍy, may he who makes a supplication be secure’

KnGQ 5
w ḥwb ʾl-rḍw

‘and he cried out to Rḍw’

127
Della Puppa 2018.

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The verb lym ‘to be blameworthy’ may also signify a kind of misconduct.
Interestingly, the in BS 1192, the author confesses to being blameworthy, lym, and
then accepts his Fate, that is, approaching death. This recalls Q 75:2 lā ʾuqsimu bin-
nafsi l-lawwāmah ‘I swear by the blameworthy spirit’.

BS 1192
l yʿly bn mnʿm w wgm w lym w tẓr mny

‘By Yʿly son of Mnʿm and he grieved and was blameworthy (confessed?) and
so Fate lay in wait’

Conversely, one inscription suggests that obedience – perhaps meaning the correct
performance of rituals – was desired by the gods and would result in rewards.
WH 3129
h rḍw tʿtb ṯwb

‘O Roḍaw, may he be rewarded for (his) obedience’

3.4.1 Forsaken by the gods

Needing divine compassion and mercy implies that the gods could forsake humans
by not responding to their prayers.128 The main way of expressing this sentiment is
the verb ḍrk ‘to be in need of’ and its rough synonym ʿyz with the deity as the direct
object.129
WH 1255
w ʿyz rḍy

‘and he was in need of Roḍay’

128
Cf. Is. 49:14.
129
SafDict, 57b.

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WH 81
w ḍrk rḍy

‘and he was in need of Roḍay’

Another term perhaps indicating a state of having been abandoned by the gods and
deprived of divine grace is ytm ‘to be an orphan’. While it is possible the writers of
such texts were in fact orphans, its coupling with ḍrk and expressions of need
regarding rain and pasture suggests a metaphorical sense instead, that is, one without
the protection of the gods.

BES17 2349
w ytm w {ḍ}rk f ndy ḏśr ġnyt w tẓr ʾ-{s}nt f h lt rwḥ w ġnmt m-śnʾ

‘and he was abandoned (lit. orphaned) and in need so he called upon Dusares
for abundance but awaited (the rains) this year so O Allāt send relief and spoil
from enemies’

One of the most frequent prayers to the gods is for relief and security from
misfortune, slm m-bʾs. Our man Bddh below complains in the narrative of suffering
from bʾs, suggesting that his prayers to the gods had gone unanswered. He turns
desperately to Roḍay as a ytm – that is one whom the gods had abandoned and whose
prayers were ignored – for aid.130

CSNS 779
l bddh bn śbn w bʾs l-h f h rḍy sʿd h-ytm
‘By Bddh son of Śbn and he suffered misfortune so O Roḍay, help the one
abandoned by the gods (lit. orphaned)’

3.5 Malignant Magic

Very few texts mention magical forces and none so far attest priestly offices, such
as sorcerers, diviners, or soothsayers. Two inscriptions give us insight into the types

130
Compare with Q 93:6.

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of magic practiced in the desert. The first appears to be the evil eye,131 called nagʾat,
and the effects of its magic, śr.132

SS 1
w rʿy sbʿt ʾgm ḫlf ġnyt w lm ysʿd f smʿ ngʾt w rʾy śr mn-h f h lt mn ʿmn w ḏśr
mn rqm ġnyt w slm m-bʾs

‘he pastured during the rising of Pleiades on herbage of the (season of)
abundance but he did not prosper, and he suspected the evil eye as he saw its
evil and so O Allāt from ʿmn and Dusares from Rqm (Petra) [grant]
abundance that he may be secure from misfortune’

A second text that contains such a reference is AWS 219, but its interpretation is
much more difficult on account of its laconic language. The author sets up a cult
stone and then calls upon Roḍaw to aid him (ġwṯ-h) in the face of (ṯrb srr). This
phrase may be understood as ‘mischief of secrets’133 or if we take srr as a participle,
‘the mischief of the whisperer.’ The prayer seems reminiscent of Q 114:4: min šarri
l-waswāsi l-ḫannās ‘from the evil of the hiding whisperer’.

AWS 219
l ḥwq bn kwlt h-nṣb w rḍw ġwṯ-h ṯrb srr

‘This cult stone (was erected) by Ḥwq son of Kwlt so O Rḍw aid him against
a whisperer’s mischief’
4 Fate
The inscriptions register another supernatural force, mny ‘Fate’.134 Unlike the gods,
however, Manay does not hear invocations nor does it accept offerings. Rather, it
seems to embody death – a force that stalks the living like a hunter, one that cannot
be bargained or reasoned with. Indeed, the same verb hunters use of stalking an
animal is applied to Fate as it pursues the living.

131
See Al-Jallad 2020 and the literature there.
132
This sentiment is quite close to Q 113.
133
Lane, 334b ṯarraba ‘doing evil or mischief’; Lane, 1338a, sirrun ‘a secret, a concealed thing’.
134
DDD, 556-558; Isaiah 65:11.

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Compare
HaNSB 257
l nẓmt bn śkr w tẓr ḥyt

‘By Nẓmt son of śkr and he lay in wait for animals’

To
KRS 2825
l ʿbt bn zkr w tẓr mny

‘By ʿbt son of Zkr and Fate lay in wait’

The force mny continues into Jāhilī poetry, where it appears in a plural form as
manāyā, also depicted as a hunter.135
Labīd, Muʿallaqah
ʾinna l-manāyā lā taṭīšu sihāmu-hā

‘Indeed, Fate’s arrows never miss their mark’

The phrase tẓr mny repeats some 47 times in the OCIANA corpus.136 It appears to
be an expression of imminent death, inscribed by authors after experiencing extreme
misfortune.

OAM 1
l ʾqwm bn slm bn gyz bn wsʿ bn rb bn mlkt w slt h-nʿm f wlh w ls ḫlf f tẓr mny

‘By ʾqwm son of Slm son of Gyz son of Wsʿ son of Rb son of Mlkt and the
livestock was captured and so he was distraught and there was no
compensation, so Fate lay in wait’

Our man ʾAqwam had his entire flock plundered with no hope of recompense. He
has accepted his end and resigned to Fate.

135
For a thorough discussion of manāyā and the related force, ad-dahr, see Al-Azmeh 2017: 179-182. The latter does
not appear in the Safaitic inscriptions, but the root occurs in personal names.
136
The interpretation given here is my own; Al-Jallad 2015; Al-Jallad and Jaworska 2019 17-18.

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Other authors held on to hope in the face of doom. The gods – it seems – could
interfere giving their worshippers momentary escape from death.
WAMS 19.2
w tẓr mny f h rḍw flṭ-h

‘and Fate lay in wait so O Ruḍaw, deliver him’

WH 3133.1
l ʾṣll bn yḫtyr w tẓr mny f h rḍw sʿd-h

‘By ʾṣll son of Yḫtyr and Fate lay in wait so O Roḍaw, help him’

Yet one text illustrates the limitations of divine intervention. While Fate may be
avoided and beguiled, ultimately it prevails and everyone meets their death, in image
captured beautifully in the following prayer:
ALS 1
w qʿd ʿd wrd w ḏkr h-mt w qṣf f h lt ʿmr ṣdq-k w gnn w m-mt ls fṣy

‘he stopped again while going to water and remembered the dead and grieved,
so O Allāt, grant long to your righteous worshipper and protect (him) but from
death there is no deliverance’

This sentiment is expressed in the recurring phrase rġm mny, which often modifies
the names of the deceased in burial and mourning inscriptions. I understand this
phrase to mean ‘struck down by Fate’, a euphemism for demise.137

HCH 10138
l sʿd bn qḥś w wgm ʿl-ḫl-h hnʾ rġm mny
‘By Sʿd son of Qḥś and he grieved for his maternal uncle Hāneʾ who was
struck down by Fate’

137
Al-Jallad and Jaworska 2019 17-18; Jamme (1967) understood it as ‘he abhorred death’, Winnett (1951) as
‘humbled by death’ and Littmann (1943) as ‘forced by fate’ or ‘he disliked fate’.
138
This text comes from the famous funerary cairn of Hāniʾ; see Harding 1953.

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5 Afterlife
The inscriptions do not provide any details regarding an afterlife. One may assume
some sense of an underworld, a sheol, based on a few indirect facts. The first is the
great concern for having a burial remain intact. One of the commonest curses upon
vandals is nqʾt ‘ejection, throwing out’, which occurs in a full form in LP 282 nqʾt
mn qbr ‘ejection from the grave’.139 This could of course simply be a matter of
respect for the corpse and rites of burial, but may also suggest that there were
consequences in the afterlife if a grave were disturbed.

LP 282
w {{h}} ʾlt rmʿn nqʾt m-qbr l-ḏ yʿwr-nh

‘O Goddess of Rmʿn, may he who would efface it (the image of the camel) be
thrown out of the grave’

Another burial practice, rarely attested in Safaitic (bly) and Nabataean (blwʾ), but
known from Islamic-period accounts of pre-Islamic Arab practices, suggests that
that the dead person’s being did not end with the demise of their physical body: the
Baliyyah, the custom of hamstringing camel to provide a mount in the afterlife.140
No bly-graves have been found intact and excavated so we cannot be entirely sure
that these burials necessarily involved a camel in their Safaitic context.141 However,
if Macdonald and Hayajneh’s association with the practice described in Islamic
sources is correct, then it would suggest a belief in an afterlife where the deceased
would require their mount.
What is clear, however, is that the gods do not seem to affect affairs in the afterlife.
There are thousands upon thousands of curses directed towards enemies and vandals,
yet not a single one concerns matters after death. Gods are asked to inflict a dazzling
array of maladies and misfortunes upon people, but it always ends at the grave.

139
On the etymology of this term, see Al-Jallad and Macdonald 2015 and SafDict105b
.
140
Macdonald (1992: 304; 1994: 762). On the Nabataean practice, see Hayajneh 2006.
141
Given that the camel was not buried, it is rather unlikely that any part of its corpse would survive the centuries
exposed to the elements. Hayajneh (2006: 110) does however mention an excavation of such a grave in Ḥaḍramut
which in fact mentioned ‘a place of a camel’.

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6 Visual Representation of Deities and the Divine World

In the popular imagination, anthropomorphic images and statues played an important
role in pre-Islamic Arabian religion. Perhaps this motivated scholars to identify some
of the figurative rock art that occurs alongside Safaitic texts as representations of
gods – indeed, drawings of females figure prominently in the rock art. In an
important 2012 article, however, Michael Macdonald established that most of the
images identified by previous scholars as gods and goddesses were in fact depictions
of human women, usually in acts of celebration, dancing, playing instruments, or
invoking deities.142
While figurative representations of divinities are found in Ancient South Arabia and
Nabataea, the Safaitic authors appeared to have had an aversion to this, which seems
to hold true in general of North Arabia. Beytls, stelae with only carved eyes, were
common in ancient Taymāʾ and in Nabataea. 143 The eventual anthropomorphic
representation of deities in the latter culture reflects Hellenistic influence.
Still, there are some images that cannot be explain in mundane ways. These suggest
that authors on occasion used visual art to represent cosmic events, perhaps
including deities. The following panel comes from the region of Jebel Qurma,
published in Brusgaard 2019. It depicts seven figures – three heavenly bodies,
surrounded by seven orbs, a procession of three camels, perhaps a calf, female, and
male, followed by a human. The associated inscription has been obliterated but I do
not suspect it would have provided information to help interpret the scene. Most
inscriptions accompanying figurative rock art simply refer to the images as dmyt
‘drawing’ or ḫṭṭ ‘carvings’.

142
Macdonald 2012; Della Puppa 2018.
143
Healey 2001: 156; Hübner and Weber 1997: 116.

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(Brusgaard 2019: 49; QUR-294.55, Jebel Qurma region, Jordan)

Abstract symbols can also accompany an inscription – these include different
arrangements of orbs, dots, lines, and oftentimes sundisks. Scholars have suggested
that such symbols carried some apotropaic power, but this is simply a guess. No text
so far has provided an explanation of their purpose.144

144
Winnett and Harding (1978:26) have suggested an astral interpretation which is followed by Clark (1979:45-54).
See Macdonald 2012: 263ff; Brusgaard 2019: 80-81; Al-Jallad 2020:303-304.

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Image of an inscription accompanied by seven dots (NE Jordan, by the author)

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And yet other images, sometimes haunting, are completely open to interpretation.
So, while we cannot demonstrate that the gods were depicted in anthropomorphic
terms, there is some evidence that the divine world was visually represented – on
occasion at least – in the rock art.

Rock art depicting a Demogorgon figure (NE Jordan, photograph by the author)

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7 Amplification and Why Write

Inscriptions rarely invoke more than a couple of deities at a time, but a few texts
suggest that a prayer was more likely to be answered the more widely it was heard.
Long lists of gods often accompany very sincere invocations for vengeance,
underscoring the petitioner’s resolve.
Khnup 1
l ʾdm bn whbʾl bn ḫl bn whbl bn ʾdm bn ḥḍg bn swr w ḫrṣ f {h} lt nqmt m-ḏkr
bn ẓlm f h lt nqmt w h bʿlsmn w śʿhqm w dśr w ʾlh tm w gdḍf w gdnbṭ w ʾlh h-
fls nqmt w ʿwr ḏ yʿwr h-sfr w sḥq w mḥq w nqʾt b-w{d}d ḏ yḫbl m-h-sfr
‘By ʾdm son of Whbʾl son of Ḫl son of Whbl son of ʾdm son of Ḫḍg son of
Swr and he kept watch so {O} Allāt let there be retribution against Ḏkr son of
Ẓlm and again O Allāt let there be retribution! and O Baʿlsamīn and
Shayʿhaqqawm and Dusares and the god of (the tribe) Taym and Gadd-Ḍayf
and Gadd-Nabaṭ and the god haf-Fals let there be retribution! And blind him
who would efface this inscription and may ruin and misfortune befall him who
would efface any part of this inscription and may he (finally) be thrown out
of the grave by a loved one’
A similarly long list accompanies the text of a desperate man whose brother was
unjustly killed while peacefully pasturing livestock. He invokes four gods, sincerely
expressing his pain and demanding justice.

C 2446
l sʿd bn mrʾ bn nr w wgm ʿ[l-]ʾḫ-h nr qtl-h ʾl-{n}bṭy <<m>>{r}ʿy nʿm ʿwḏ w
ḍf f h lt mʿmn w ʾlt dṯn w gd[ʿ](w)ḏ w gdḍf ṯʾr m-ḏ ʾslf w wlh k{b}{r} sḥr ʿl-
ʾḫ-h ḥbb-h l-ʾbd
‘By Sʿd son of Mrʾ son of Nr and he grieved {for} his brother Nr whom the
Nabataeans killed {when} he {was pasturing} the livestock of (the tribes)
ʿAwīḏ and Ḍayf so, O Allāt from ʿmn and goddess of Dṯn and Gadd-ʿAwīḏ
and Gadd-Ḍayf, let him have vengeance against the one who committed this
act and he was {continuously} distraught with a broken heart over his brother,
his beloved forever.’

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If the effectiveness of a prayer could be increased by expanding its divine audience,

then perhaps they could be amplified by reaching a wider human audience as well.
The inscriptions ask the passerby to read and/or invoke (qrʾ, dʿy) the inscriptions.
This alone suggests that the texts were intended to be viewed and consumed, but
why? A small number of men who upon encountering the names and prayers of their
kin paused and carved what was normally only said aloud – an oral interaction with
the text.
SIJ 688
l ġṯ bn {k}hl bn ---- w w{g}[----] b-rʾy n[]{ṣ}{n} m-ˁśb w {ˀ}[l]{f} mʿ-{h}-
mʿzy w gls snt nzz ʾl yhd w wgd ʾṯr hnʾ ḫyr f ql l-ʾl-h h-ˁ{m}r f h bʿlsmn
rw{ḥ}

‘By Ġṯ son of Khl son of ---- and he...... at the appearance of Nisan (rising of
Aries) on account of green pasture and he stayed with the goats; and he halted
the year of the struggle of the Jews; and he found the traces of Hnʾ Ḫyr (or: in
well preserved?) and said: may his people have long life, so, O Bˁls¹mn, send
the winds’

Another man finding the traces of the tribespeople of Ḍayf makes an all-
encompassing oral prayer to protect them for all time.

KRS 1015145
l śḥl bn nṣrʾl bn śkrʾl bn nṣrʾl bn ġbdy w wgd ʾṯr ʾl ḍf w rb-h qyl hy lt slm w b-
ʾn-h slm w {k}m-h ʾbd w h lt {l}ʿn m-ḫbl mʿl-ḥwq
‘By Śḥl son of Nṣrʾl son of Śkr son of Nṣrʾl son of Ġbdy and he found the
traces of the lineage of Ḍayf and exalted them saying: O Allāt may they be
secure and in the present time secure and remaining so forever and O Allāt
may whosoever effaces (this) from jealous be cursed’

145
Upon examining the photograph again closely, it seems better to read what I have taken previously as {q}m as
rather {k}m, equating it with Classical Arabic kamā, giving us the phrase kamā-hu ʾabada ‘as it is forever’, that is,
‘remaining so forever’.

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Such inscriptions provide only a glimpse at what must have been an oral tradition of
interacting with inscriptions. The repetition of prayers contained within the text, or
making a prayer upon the text’s author and kin, would seem to be a way to increase
its effectiveness. If more people prayed for one’s security, it was more likely that the
gods would provide it. This notion could have motivated the sincere to carve prayers
into stone in hopes that others would lend them their voice. This practice
foreshadows what we encounter centuries later in Islamic Arabic inscriptions, which
invoke Allāh to have mercy upon or forgive the writer and reader of the text.146

8 Worldview – a reconstruction
From the facts above, I will permit myself the following paragraph to speculate on
the way the ancient nomads who produced Safaitic inscriptions conceptualized the
world and their place in it. The universe consisted of two primary hierophanies: the
gods ʾʾlht, sentient representations of nature and emotions, on the one hand, and
Fate, mny, a chaotic force that causes misfortune and death. Fate is ever present,
stalking mankind, able to manifest at any moment as an enemy’s arrow, a hungry
predator, or even as drought itself, bringing death to the entire land. There are no
prayers to Mny; no inscriptions attempt to petition it for mercy or compassion. The
only hope humans had to survive was to seek the intervention of the gods, but this
was never guaranteed. The performance of sacrificial rites – the ritual slaughter of
animals, burnt offerings, libations, votive images, and pilgrimages – motivated the
gods to respond to human appeals and to provide deliverance from perils, that is,
manifestations of mny. Indeed, the regularity of the rains and the alternation of the
seasonal cycle depended upon them. Baʿal-Samīn, the god of storm, could withhold
the rains when unsatisfied giving free reign to Mny. Sometimes the gods even
concerned themselves with the day-to-day affairs of humans, such as economic
justice, vengeance, and the reunification of loved ones. But it was impossible for any
person to keep the favor of the gods permanently. When gods lost interest and
abandoned someone, when their prayers were no longer answered, death was
eminent, w tẓr mny.

146
See Lindstedt and Harumaki 2016: 77-78.

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Appendix: Index of Divinities in the Safaitic Inscriptions

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Ahmad Al-Jallad Draft (March 12, 2021) for discussion. Request permission to cite: [email protected]

Sigla

ALS Safaitic inscriptions in A. Al-Jallad 2018

C Safaitic inscriptions in G. Ryckmans 1950-1951

DDD Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, K. van der Toorn, B.
Becking, P.W. van der Hors 1999

HASI Safaitic inscriptions collected by A. Al-Huṣan, published on OCIANA

HAUI Safaitic inscriptions published on OCIANA

HCH Safaitic inscriptions published in G.L. Harding 1953

HH Safaitic inscriptions published in H. Hayajneh 2016

HTham 1 Thamudic B inscription published in H. Hayajneh et al. 2015

KnGQ Safaitic inscriptions in E.A. Knauf 1991

KRS Inscriptions recorded by Geraldine King on the Basalt Desert Rescue

Survey in north-eastern Jordan in 1989 and published on OCIANA

MA Safaitic inscriptions in S.A. Al-Maani & F. Al-Ajlouni 2003

MNSA Safaitic inscriptions published in S.ʿA. Al-Maani 1996.

OAM 1 Safaitic inscriptions published in A. Al-Jallad 2021b

OCIANA Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia

RWQ Safaitic inscriptions published in M. Al-Rusan 2004

SafDict Safaitic Dictionary, A. Al-Jallad and K. Jaworska 2019

SD Sabaic Dictionary, A.F.L. Beeston, M.A. Ghul, W.W. Müller,

and J. Ryckmans 1982.

SIJ Safaitic inscriptions in F.V. Winnett 1957.

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SS Safaitic inscriptions in Al-Jallad 2020d

Umm Daraǧ Hidalgo-Chacón Díez 2016

WH Safaitic inscription in F.V. Winnett and W.L. Reed 1970

WTay Taymanitic inscriptions in F.V. Winnett and W.L. Reed 1970

WTI Thamudic/Dumaitic inscriptions in F.V. Winnett and W.L. Reed 1970

ZeGA Safiatic inscriptions in H. Zeinaddin 2000

ZSIJ Safaitic inscriptions published on OCIANA

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