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— Corpus of Nabataean Aramaic-Greek Inscriptions INSCRIPTIONS ARAMAIC-GREEK OF NABATAEAN CORPUS e-ISSN 2610-9336 Antichistica 28 ISSN 2610-881X Studi orientali 11 — Corpus of Nabataean Aramaic-Greek PETRANTONI Inscriptions Giuseppe Petrantoni Edizioni Ca’Foscari 28 Corpus of Nabataean Aramaic-Greek Inscriptions Antichistica Studi orientali Collana diretta da Lucio Milano 28 | 11 Antichistica Studi orientali Direttore scientifico Lucio Milano (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Comitato scientifico Claudia Antonetti (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Filippo Maria Carinci (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Ettore Cingano (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Joy Connolly (New York University, USA) Andrea Giardina (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italia) Marc van de Mieroop (Columbia University in the City of New York, USA) Elena Rova (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Fausto Zevi (Sapienza Università di Roma, Italia) Direzione e redazione Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia Palazzo Malcanton Marcorà Dorsoduro 3484/D 30123 Venezia Antichistica | Studi orientali e-ISSN 2610-9336 ISSN 2610-881X URL http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/it/edizioni/collane/antichistica/ Corpus of Nabataean Aramaic-Greek Inscriptions Giuseppe Petrantoni Venezia Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing 2021 Corpus of Nabataean Aramaic-Greek Inscriptions Corpus of Nabataean Aramaic-Greek Inscriptions Giuseppe Petrantoni © 2021 Giuseppe Petrantoni per il testo | for the text © 2021 Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing per la presente edizione | for the present edition cb Quest’opera è distribuita con Licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione 4.0 Internazionale This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Qualunque parte di questa pubblicazione può essere riprodotta, memorizzata in un sistema di recupero dati o trasmessa in qualsiasi forma o con qualsiasi mezzo, elettronico o meccanico, senza autorizzazione, a condizione che se ne citi la fonte. Any part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission provided that the source is fully credited. Certificazione scientifica delle Opere pubblicate da Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing: il saggio pubblicato ha ottenuto il parere favorevole da parte di valutatori esperti della materia, attraverso un processo di revisione doppia anonima, sotto la responsabilità del Comitato scientifico della collana. La valutazione è stata condotta in aderenza ai criteri scientifici ed editoriali di Edizioni Ca’ Foscari. Scientific certification of the works published by Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing: the essay published has received a favourable evaluation by subject-matter experts, through a double blind peer review process under the responsibility of the Scientific Committee of the series. The evaluations were conducted in adherence to the scientific and editorial criteria established by Edizioni Ca’ Foscari. Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia Dorsoduro 3246, 30123 Venezia http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/ | [email protected] 1a edizione aprile 2021 | 1st edition April 2021 ISBN 978-88-6969-507-0 [ebook] ISBN 978-88-6969-508-7 [print] The publication of this book was kindly and generously supported with a grant provided by Professor Lucio Milano Corpus of Nabataean Aramaic-Greek Inscriptions / Giuseppe Petrantoni— 1. ed. — Venezia: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari – Digital Publishing, 2021. — 182 p.; 16 cm. — (Antichistica; 28,11). — ISBN 978-88-6969-508-7. URL https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/it/edizioni/libri/978-88-6969-508-7/ DOI http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-507-0 Corpus of Nabataean Aramaic-Greek Inscriptions Giuseppe Petrantoni Abstract The aim of the present study is to collect together all the Nabataean Aramaic-Greek epigraphic evidence existing in the Middle-East and Oriental Mediterranean areas and dating from the 1st century BCE to the 3rd-4th century CE. The volume contains 51 inscriptions written in Nabataean and Greek. The texts, which are mostly engraved on stones, have been accurately identified, tran- scribed and analysed through an historical and epigraphic commentary. It is known that, in the Hellenistic and Early Roman Near East, the contact between Greek and Nabataean led the inhabitants to erect statues and write inscriptions in public spaces employing one of the two languages or both. This practice is considered as a Hellenistic influence. In this uncertainly diglossic situation, Greek was employed as a prestige language and lingua franca and Nabataean as a vernacular idiom. To date there exists no comprehensive corpus, either in digital or in paper format, bringing together all these Nabataean-Greek inscriptions, of which there are around six thousand (dating from the 2nd century BCE to the 4th century CE). This collection could open up important avenues for further research in the analysis of the linguistic contact between Nabataean and Greek. It may deepen our knowledge of the linguistic situation of Nabataean in the field of Semitic Philology and Semitic Epig- raphy; in addition, the corpus allows us to study the modalities of cultural exchange (especially in social and religious contexts) between Nabataeans and Greeks. Moreo- ver, the investigation of onomastics (mainly of Nabataean names transcribed into Greek script) may allow us to know more about the Nabataean phonological system. Keywords Nabataean Aramaic. Greek. Epigraphy. Diglossia. Ancient Near East. Corpus of Nabataean Aramaic-Greek Inscriptions Giuseppe Petrantoni Acknowledgements The initial version of this work was the core of my PhD dissertation Corpus delle iscri- zioni bilingui aramaico nabateo-greche. Approfondimenti onomastici e problemi di ri- costruzione del sistema fonologico del nabateo which I discussed in February 2017 in Sapienza University of Rome under the supervision of Prof. Alessio Agostini. I am very grateful to him for guiding me attentively during its preparation. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Prof. Lucio Milano for his patient guidance, encouragement and useful suggestions in publishing this research work. I wish to express my gratitude to Prof. Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo for her invaluable advice and assistance in keeping my progress on schedule, from checking readings and literature to discussing the inscriptions. I am grateful also to Prof. Marco Moriggi who showed a great interest in my research works giving me much helpful advice. I thank Prof. Adalberto Magnelli who gave me precious suggestions on various issues concerning the bilingualism and the role of Greek in the Ancient Near East. Finally, I wish to pay homage to the memory of Prof. Gianfranco Fiaccadori who has al- ways shown interest in studying the Greek-Semitic bilingualism; this indirectly steered me toward the argument proposed here. Corpus of Nabataean Aramaic-Greek Inscriptions Giuseppe Petrantoni Table of Contents Introduction 13 Jordan 31 Syria 73 Egypt 103 Saudi Arabia 121 Lebanon 129 Aegean Sea 133 Nabataean Glossary 143 List of Abbreviations and Bibliography 155 Plates 171 To Sonia, whose love, support and advice have never failed, this book is dedicated Corpus of Nabataean Aramaic-Greek Inscriptions Giuseppe Petrantoni Introduction Summary 1 Introduction. – 2 Nabataean Aramaic and Greek. – 2.1 The Variety of Nabataean Aramaic. – 2.2 Nabataean Aramaic in Contact with Greek. – 3 Nabataean Aramaic-Greek Inscriptions. – 3.1 Research Background. – 3.2 The Numbering and Nature of the Inscriptions. 1 Introduction The history of the Nabataeans is clearly linked to the history of the Ancient Near East. According to Greek and Roman sources, as well as the epigraphic and archaeological evidence, Nabataeans frequent- ly interacted with Greeks, Romans and Jews. Since the Nabataeans were a nomadic tribal society, there exists no real Nabataean liter- ature. They presumably had an oral tradition that can no longer be reconstructed today.1 The Nabataeans constituted an ethnic group in which most liter- ates (a small minority, who nonetheless occupied a dominant social, economic, and political position) used Greek as the language of com- munication in formal contexts. Aramaic, instead, was considered as an informal and vernacular language dating to a later period. The Nabataeans were probably bilingual, as witness the inscrip- tions written in Greek and Nabataean collected in the present vol- ume. Since the times of the Achaemenid Empire (ca. 550-330 BCE), during which the royal chancellery continued with the deeply-en- trenched employment of Aramaic in local and provincial administra- tion, there was an expansion of multilingualism and a spread of va- rieties of Aramaic, Greek and other languages, such as Hebrew and 1 Wenning 2007, 25. Antichistica 29 10.30687/978-88-6969-507-0/000 13 Giuseppe Petrantoni Introduction Arabic idioms, which became evident during the subsequent Greco- Roman period and until the 6th-7th century CE.2 When Alexander the Great had conquered the lands of the Near Eastern civilizations and the local dynasties were established by his successors, the Hellenization of this geographical area had a strong impact causing wars and social instability, especially in Syria.3 The real degree of the influence of the Greek language and culture is still debated, and varied from region to region.4 Furthermore, after the Greek and Roman conquest of the Near East, including Arabia, Au- gustus established a period of relative peacefulness,
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