THE OF TAlMAN

Giovanni Garbini

At an international conference on ancient writing that took place in Liege in 1989, J. C. Greenfield discussed a passage in a Luwian hieroglyphic inscription found at Carchemish that had appeared in an earlier study by J.D. Hawkins'! In the inscription, a local king, Yariris, who lived in the 8th century B.C.,2 proudly asserts that had a knowledge of twelve languages and four different scripts. The scripts included his own (Luwian hieroglyphic), that of Assyria (), that of Tyre (Phoenician) and that of Taiman. In his paper, Greenfield identified the last script with 'a variety of the Northern branch of the so-called South Arabian script' and, more specifically, the script of Taima and Dedan, on the grounds that 'in the Hebrew Bible TemalTeman refers to the oasis of Taima in Northern Arabia'. According to Greenfield, the most ('Thamudic') inscriptions are datable to the 8th_7th century B.C.3 Whereas Greenfield's observation that the script of Taiman known to Yariris would have corresponded to the most ancient phase of North Arabian script is no doubt correct, his statements concerning Taima and Dedan are questionable. The most ancient North Arabian inscriptions have been found in , Palestine, and Luristan.4 A small group of inscribed seals are of Palestinian origin, as is shown by their typology (stamp seals) and by their iconographic motifs.5 As for the Hejaz, the most ancient inscriptions come from Taima,6 but they are paleographically later than

1 Greenfield (1991), Hawkins (1975). 2 His name, now read as 'Yariris', corresponds to the previous reading' Araras' . 3 The same thesis was independently asserted by A. Livingstone in a congress in London in 1991; see Livingstone (1995). 4 North Arabian inscriptions found in Southern Arabia, at Hajar bin Humeid and Yala in Yemen and at Raybun in Hadhramawt, are not relevant for our discussion here. Almost all this material has come to light only recently and is datable to the 9th-8th century B.C.. It makes the general picture of South Semitic writing much more complicated than Greenfield believed. 5 On these inscriptions, sometimes defined 'proto-Arabian', see Garbini (1976), Bron (1985), Sass (1991). 6 Winnett (1970: 88-93). 148 GIOVANNI GARBINI the Mesopotamian ones. The hypothesis by F. W. Winnett, who dated them to the time of Nabonidus, has been confirmed by some recent discoveries at the site, which include an inscription containing the name of this Babylonian king.7 The inscriptions from Dedan are later than the ones from Taima and they can hardly be earlier than the 5th century B.C.8 It is, therefore, clear that when the king of Carchemish spoke of the script of Taiman, he could not be referring to Taima, an oasis in the Arabian desert 1500 km from Carchemish, where script started to be used only two centuries later. Archaeological excavations in Taima, moreover, have proved that the most ancient structures of the town are not earlier than the reign of Nabonidus.9 We must also take into consideration that king Yariris lived in Northern Syria. The languages and scripts that he was familiar with must have been those that were used by people who were in direct contact with his palace. The written texts would have included Assyrian clay tablets with their cylinder seals, Phoenician and Aramaic papyrus documents (in the 8th century B.C. Phoenicians and Arameans used the same script), stamp seals which authenticated such documents, ostraca and texts on other types of perishable material. It is unlikely that the Luwian king would have been familiar with rock inscriptions from Syria, Jordan and Arabia, assuming indeed that such inscriptions existed at that date. If the script of Taiman is not the script of Taima, what was Taiman? Around the year 900 B.C., the Assyrian king Adad-nirari 11 (911-891 B.C.) led six military campaigns against the region of Khanigalbat, which lay to the East of the northern course of the river Euphrates. In the first two he fought against Nur-Adad 'the Taimanite', who was vanquished near the town ofPazi, at the foot of Kashiari mountains (today called Tfir (Abdin), and at Nasibina (the Nisibis of the Roman period, today Nu~aybin). In the third campaign, the king gained the submission of other towns in the area ofPazi, which were ruled by Mamli 'the Taimanite'. In the fourth campaign he conquered Mukuru 'the Taimanite', who was allied with the Arameans. In the fifth one Adad-nirari collected tribute without encountering resistance. In the sixth one he again besieged Nur• Adad 'the Taimanite' in the town of Nasibina. Although the text is fragmentary, it appears that Nur-Adad surrendered and agreed to move to

7 Hayajneh (2001). 8 A. van den Branden (1962) called the most ancient North Arabian inscriptions 'Dedanite' due to his associating them with the biblical Dedan. 9 Bawden, Edens and Miller (1980). Epigraphic documentation presently available does not offer any support to the classification suggested by Macdonald (2000: 29), who calls the inscriptions from Mesopotamia, Luristan, and Palestine, dated to 9th-8th century B.C., 'Dispersed Oasis North Arabian'.