Inscription
The Sogmatar inscription of Seleucid year 476
The seat text names no king. Ellis says King Wa’el of Edessa had it cut.
Ellis dates it to AD 165. Healey 2009 dates the same stone to 165. The text’s own date is Shebat of the year 476.
- Citation
- John F. Healey, Aramaic Inscriptions and Documents of the Roman Period, Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, volume IV (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). The contents put inscriptions from Sumatar at numbers 48 to 52, from page 228. Number 49 is the seat text, headed as a dedication to a religious office, and labeled OSI As37 (D24). Number 48 is the altar and pillar of the same month, OSI As36 (D23). OSI is his name for Han J.W. Drijvers and John F. Healey, The Old Syriac Inscriptions of Edessa and Osrhoene (Leiden, Boston and Köln: Brill, 1999). The 1999 inscription pages did not open, so no page of that volume is given. Ralph Ellis quotes an English text in Ancient Origins, 15 July 2017. He does not name his translator.
- Locator
- Sumatar Harabesi. Healey 2009, no. 49, OSI As37 (D24). The stone’s date in his translation is Shebat of the year 476.
What the source says
In the English Ellis publishes, the inscription says that in Sebat of the year 476 a pillar was set on the blessed mountain and a seat was erected for the one who maintains it. If the seat is withheld, or the pillar ruined, the god will judge. Set beside Healey 2009, no. 49, the pillar, the blessed mountain, the seat, and the judgment agree in sense. Healey’s translation also names Manish son of Adona, Maana, Alkur, Belbena, and Tiridates the governor, and it says the recompense is from Maralahe. Ellis does not print those names. His wording is not a copy of Healey’s, and his translator is not named.
Why it is here
This is the text The Ark of Edessa starts from.
Ralph’s interpretation
He asks whether the seat is the biblical ark. He also notes that the hill is like Silbury Hill in size and shape, and he says the likeness is unexplained. Both the ark question and the Silbury comparison are his.
Alternative readings
Healey 2009, no. 49, does not name King Wa’el. The men it names set up the pillar and the seat. On no. 48, Tiridates son of Adona, governor of Arab, builds an altar and a pillar for the life of his lord the king. Healey’s note places that governor in the rule of Wael bar Sahru. The king is not named on either stone. Wa’el as the man who had the seat cut is Ellis’ claim. The usual reading of the seat is a religious office at Sumatar, not the biblical ark.