Page 14 - Arabian Studies (I)

2 Arabian Studies I
the order and placing of the Himyaritic months; but also, the text in
Arabic script enables us to sec that in some cases the form of a
month-name as hitherto accepted is a misreading which needs to be
corrected. The subjoined table shows, (a) the Himyaritic months as
named in the Arabic prose text, (b) their equivalents in the European
calendar, and (c) the epigraphically attested names.
• (a) (b) (c)
1^.cJ 1 y J October dsrbn

1 y J November dmhltn
sFt\ yj December din

CbuJl yJ January ddt
February dhltn

c-y** )J March dm ‘n

April dtbtn

y J May dmbkrn

JsLjfcJl y J June dqyzn

July dmdr'h

O _M y J August dhrf

September (d)'ln
dmhltn is attested in Jamme 545; and there can now be no
reasonable doubt that the Corpus editor’s reading dmhgtn in C 46
must be amended to the same form. In the palaeography of these late
texts, g and / are virtually indistinguishable, and the editor’s h is
clearly a mistake.5
din was so read by Mordtmann and Mittwoch, and by the Repertoire
editor, in R 4157/7. In my monograph, I had proposed amending
this to dllltnj, a name occurring in the earlier Sabaean material; but
the manuscript shows this conjecture to have been unfounded.
dhltn, occurring in C 621, has hitherto been read as dhgtn\ but see
above in connection with dmhltn.