The updated card of AMSI 41 is here: ociana.osu.edu And the inscriptions of Wrd's burial party are: AMSI 9 AMSI 10 AMSI 36 AMSI 68 AMSI 69 AMSI 92 AMSI 93 AMSI 96 AMSI 114 AMSI 150 AMSI 151 AMSI 152 AMSI 153. Enjoy!

#New_Site #OCIANA! At least 15 men record building a remarkable cairn and grieving for a man called Wrd, including his sons. The site is also home to AMSI 41, the famous inscription terminating in 'w m mt ls fsy' 'and from death, there is no deliverance!' ociana.osu.edu/sites/983

#New on #OCIANA - A South Arabian abecedary from NW Arabia, discovered by Yahya Albalawi. The inscription, written by a Minaean, records a unique variant of the South Arabian script, with some letter forms closer to North Arabian. Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

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Can you read this? Paleo-Arabic is the most important material witness to the immediate context of Islam's rise. Learn to analyze these documents and how they help write history in the last course of EI's summer cycle: Intro to Paleo-Arabic (Aug. 10-14): tinyurl.com/4shnfv7j

#New on #OCIANA - a fascinating collection of #Safaitic inscriptions associated with the burial of a man called Ẓʿn, edited by students of the Safaitic summer school. The 1st is here: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions... See the collection here: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions... More to come soon!

#New on #OCIANA - 2 newly published South Semitic partial abecedaries (halḥamqaries). 1. Himaitic: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions... 2. Taymanitic: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions... What they share in common is part of a fascinating story about the spread of the script. See: academia.edu/167205988/Al...

@phdnix.bsky.social @maartenkossmann.bsky.social @lameensouag.bsky.social this is above my paygrade!

𝘼𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩! #NACAL (North Atlantic Conference on Afro-Asiatic Linguistics) 49# in Paris - Call for Papers. Key dates - Abstract Submission: June 15, 2026 Acceptance: June 30, 2026 Conference: 30 Sept to 2 Oct, 2026 Email: nacalinguistics@gmail.com For more: sites.google.com/view/afroasi...

Just published on DiCoNab: a new Paleo-Arabic inscription, by yours truly, perhaps referring to the Ghassanid raid on khaybar in 567 CE. Sheds more light on the northern dialect and writing school of Arabic at this time - see the card for details. diconab.huma-num.fr/inscriptions...

Public lecture on Thursday in Paris. I will deliver a lecture on the linguistic pre-history and history of the Mecca region, based on two seasons of epigraphic fieldwork carried out btwn '21-'22. Welcome.

#New on #OCIANA: Is this the oldest #Arabic inscription yet discovered? The famous #Bāyir inscription is now online. An ancient Arab calls upon the Canaanite gods: Malkom, Kemosh, and Qaws to protect the wells of Bāyir (ancient: ʾabāʾir). Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

Monday in Cambridge - سلم اىىم www.ames.cam.ac.uk/events/paleo...

Five years ago now surveying the extremely harsh terrain south of Mecca. Inscriptions forthcoming...

#New Is Baʿal-Samīn (the storm deity) an ʾ𝒍𝒉 𝒔̣𝒅𝒒 'a just god?' Rain-making prayers in ancestral Arabian religion and the expectation of divine 'justice' in a multipolar divine world. A extremely important #Safaitic inscription published here: shorturl.at/oJvMW.

#New on #OCIANA: The ancient Arabian divine world was populated by independent powers. The author of this #Safaitic inscription calls upon an assembly of 7 gods to save "from what Bʿls¹mn (the storm god) has unjustly wrought upon us" = 'drought' Find more: shorturl.at/UyXCr

#New on #OCIANA: A #Dhofari itinerarium (prayer for travel): "help him who has departed; give long life (to him who) is fed up with staying in one place". How many can still relate to this... ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

Was Biblical literature translated into Arabic before Islam? This is the million-dollar question. This paper argues that two pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions contain an Arabic trans. of Deuteronomy 6:5 via the New Testament. Find more: www.academia.edu/164814783/Al...

#OCIANA #Top_10_in_2025 : The #OCIANA team inserted more than 1500 new inscriptions into the database. Here are our top ten (with a three-way tie at #10) of the year, just in case you missed them! From Nabonidus to Dahr, let us known what you think! www.academia.edu/145461821/OC...

#Behind_the_scenes: The first inscriptions from the #Mecca region are going into #OCIANA. They are not public now, but you can get an idea of the distribution here! Can you see what I see? More coming very soon. (yellow are inscriptions not available to the public yet). Photo - wadi nu'man (#7)

#Updated on #OCIANA - The first Ancient South Arabian inscription from the Ḥarrah, from Zalaf, Syria! Was it carved by a North Arabian who learned the script or a wandering South Arabian trader? Impossible to know! But its irregularities tell a story. Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

#New on #OCIANA - The #Dhofari Script 2 inscriptions documented by Dr. Al-Mashikhi, many thanks for his hard work. DhI 8 is simply remarkable. The Mušrikīn of the Quran state: 'nothing dooms us but Fate (ad-dahr)'. DhI 8 states: 'Dahr, lord of plunder and fear, burned fiercely'.

There is an unpublished Dhofari inscription (Oman) by a man called Rbʾl (popular name)! Nabataean territory was diverse and people of various linguistic backgrounds surely identified as subjects of the Nabataean king. Here's a beautiful example of this diversity: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

Even names like Rbʾl are not decisive. Here is a local nomad from the Ḥarrah, belonging to the nomadic tribe of Nġbr, writing in Safaitic, who is the son of a man called Rabb-ʾEl: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions.... The diminutive Rbbʾl occurs as far away as Qaryat al-Fāw in the famous Rbbʾl epitaph.

Here is a fantastic text, an Arabic speaker who says he belongs to the people (lit. tribe ʾāl) of Rm /rūm/ Rome. l ʾkzm bn ġṯ ḏ ʾl rm w ws¹qt -h ṯmd mn- {s¹}bl By ʾkzm son of Ġṯ of the people of Rm and the Ṯamūd drove him away from (the) road ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

My favorite: this fellow, Bayān son of Taym, belongs to the tribe of Titus! ḏ ʾl tts. He records spending the dry season in this place, qyẓ. ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions.... Maybe the tribe's eponymous ancestor was a runaway Roman, or maybe just a local whose parents gave him a Roman name.

This graffito is by a guy called Ntn. His inscription, however, is not in Canaanite or Aramaic, but Safaitic. Ntn son of Ḫlf and he pastured (w rʿy) so, O Allāt, grant abundance (f h lt ġny{t})). There are also non-Arabic tribal names among the nomads.

Is the etymology of this name suggestive that he was not an Arabic speaker or an "Arab" (whatever that meant in this period)? True, Ntn is not Arabic, but so what? Here is a Dadanitic txt by a man in the mirror: Natan-Baʿl, whose father had an Arabian name, wny. ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

#OCIANA Update! GIS info is now available for the #Dhofari inscriptions! More of these texts will be inserted soon so keep you eye on the 'last updated' page.

Pre-Islamic Arabic and Greek! The #Safaitic abecedary we posted earlier this week was far more interesting than originally thought. A close re-reading of the stone revealed the entire Safaitic alphabet in the Greek letter order! See the study here: www.academia.edu/144853577/Al...