Page 34 - Arabiab Studies (IV)

24 Arabian Studies IV
has been plausibly connected by Rhodokanakis with Arabic
jazaba6 and rendered ‘sich beschcnken zu lassen von diesem
Mann’, but the idea that what he gave them was the statuette
seems absurd. It is more likely to refer to the reward or bride-price
received from him for his enjoyment of the mut'ah.1
To twist nfq> only attested otherwise as a juristic adjective
‘legally effective*, into ‘von ihm loszukommen [whatever that
means!]’ is hardly justifiable; and to treat §lmtn as an object placed
in front of its governing verb is dubious syntax. Preferably,
bnhw/w§lmtn are both objects of a transitive use of nfq, meaning
something like ‘legally hand over’: the statuette was, of course, to
be physically handed over to the deity, and the son—namely the
child ultimately bom—was to be ‘vowed’ to the deity in the same
way that Samuel was, when he was finally bom by his previously
childless mother Hannah as the result of her prayers to God.8 The
mutilated word at the beginning of line 12 may have been
something like ‘as a thank-offering’.
Hence, in lines 9-12: ‘For the deity had instructed them, in
the event of [either of them] becoming pregnant, to acquire this
statuette; and subsequently they made it their duty to accept the
bride-gift from this man, and to vow the son bom of him and the
statuette as a thank-offering on their behalf’.
Part (d) consists of conventional aspirations for the personal
well-being of mr’hw/mhbdm/bn/wdm/wbnhw/lby‘tt/w’mhhw/
’lt/tby'z. Rhodokanakis supposes that MHBP was the overlord of
S^DirMS1—'who was himself the immediate overlord of the
TPY‘Z group (line 3). So remote an antecedent referent for the
pronoun seems impossible; nor do I know any evidence elsewhere
for a case of a tribal overlord having a superior overlord other than
the king. A possible solution is that MHBP was ‘her husband’, i.e.
the one from whom she had been unable to get a child. UfclYTT
can hardly be identified otherwise than as the child actually bom
to N‘MGD, though it must be an open question whether he is
described as ‘her son’ or ‘his son’, i.e. son of the legal pater (though
not genitor) MHBP. As for |mhhw, I feel that this must have the
same connotation as it does in line 6, with the pronoun referring to
the deity. Shifts of pronominal reference are familiar to any
Arabist.
A final problem is that of the (evidently very close) mutual
relationship between the two women N‘MGD and N‘MT. The text
yields no direct evidence on this point, and one can only offer a
conjecture: that perhaps they were both co-wives of MHBP,
neither of whom had been able to get offspring by him.
The sequence of events seems to be as follows. Two women of