Page 15 - Arabian Studies (I)

New Light on the I limy antic Calendar 3

dm'n: the Arabic spelling shows that this name is not based on the
toponym MaTn.
dnibkrn was unknown at the time when l published my monograph,
but is now attested in the missing half of C 448, published by
G. Garbini.6
qiyciz is the spelling of the verse text; the fact that the prose text has
qiyad is of no significance, seeing that in mediaeval manuscripts there
is constant fluctuation between the two letters.
The evidence for the last item is in an unpublished text, for
information of which I am indebted to A. G. Lundin; this has
/wrh/ilw/'ln/dblufn/dlhms1 t/wf. . ./. That this text belongs to
the appropriate period is clear from the fact that it evidently has
an era dating, and is not dated by an eponym as is the case in the
earlier Sabaean material; and the formula used is identical with that
occurring in C 448.
One outstanding problem remains in the fact that a month called
dd'wn is attested in C 540 and 541. This would seem to be an
alternative name for one of the months listed above, apart, of course,
from such of them as are actually attested in those two inscriptions,
namely dsrbn, dm'n, dtbtn, dqyzn and dmdr’n. And if my
interpretation of C 540/54-617 is correct, dd’wn would seem to
have fallen in the winter half of the year, between the autumn and
the spring monsoons.
The outline of the events described in C 541 is as follows:

1. The Ma’rib dam was ruptured in dmdr’n = July8 of the Himyarite
year 657.
2. A labour force for the repairs was summoned to assemble in
dsrbn = October of the same year.
3. After the work had begun, it had to be suspended because of an
outbreak of plague, necessitating the dispersal of the labour force;
work was not resumed until ‘the last period of dd’wn (mdt/dd’wn/
’hrtn)\ but no year is here stated.
4. The work was completed in dm'n = March of the year 658.
The March when the work was completed must have been either
the fifth or the seventeenth month (depending on when the
Himyarite calendar year began) subsequent to the summoning of the
repair force. If it was the fifth, then the reference in line 133 to
‘eleven months’ is inexplicable.9 We are forced to conclude that it
was the seventeenth. Within that period, the months November to
February would have recurred twice. It is tempting to deduce that
dd’wn was one of those four months, and that the word ‘last’ is
intended to signify the latter of the two occurrences of the month