Thāj: A Pre-Islamic Site in Northeastern Arabia

Abstract

may have possessed a less highly developed, or different, ritualistic vocabulary than Hebrew. If so, mb'r may be a Moabite term for altar. The chief objection to such an interpretation is that the wavy fluting below the inscription suggests drapery, hence that the object bearing the inscription was the statue of a king or god, and we should have expected an inscription relating the dedication of an altar or other cultic object to have been engraved on the object itself rather than on a statue. The preposition 1 before the noun probably has the sense of as as in Gen. 22:2, Dt. 31:21, Ps. 48:4, etc. The conjunction ky (Heb. ki), for, because, occurs frequently in the Mesha inscription. In line 4 of the latter it is followed by a statement of the reason why the king set up the stele. If that is the case here the two following letters, 'h , are probably part of a verb. Verbs beginning with 'h are rare in Semitic; in fact, our choice seems limited to either 'hb, to love, or 'hl, to tent. 2 A restoration 'h (b) seems most likely. The word at the beginning of line 3 might possibly be restored as [b]nh, his son. The rest of the line reads as follows: whn 'sty 't ... which may be translated And behold made . The first word hn is doubtless to be explained from Heb. hen, behold (cf. Ex. 4: 1, etc.) rather than from Aramaic (Old and Biblical) hen, if. The verb 'sty, found also in lines 23 and 26 of the Mesha inscription, corresponds to Heb. 'asithi, I made. The last two letters are almost certainly the sign of the direct and definite object (Heb. '3th) which appears frequently in the Mesha inscription (lines 5, 6, 9, etc.). In the light of the above investigation the following translation may be proposed: