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Archaeology

For Int’l Women’s Day: An Arabian Woman of Late Antiquity Prays to Goddesses for Peace

Juan Cole 03/08/2019

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For Int’l Women’s Day, via OCIANA a Safaitic Arabic inscription [c. 1-400 AD], by a wealthy woman calling on two goddesses for peace:

    “By Shamat daughter of Sar is the mule [owned] and O {Shahqam} —-m—- [and] Allat, [grant] {security} [for] the people of al-Ḍaf.”

This inscription from the first centuries after Christ in Arabia is remarkable in many ways. It seems to suggest that a woman carved it, which indicates literate women. This woman owned a mule, i.e., had property and was likely well off. Then, here is a woman calling on two ancient goddesses, the little-known Shahqam and the renowned Allat, asking them to bestow peace and security on her tribe. The inscription suggests a nexus of female power-knowledge even in late Antique Arabia.

The word for security or peace is salām, which Arabic-speakers still use as a greeting.

(-Note, I’m guessing at the voweling, since the original inscription only shows consonants and sometimes glottal stops, and am the furthest thing from a Safaitic expert, but I thought it would make the OCIANA transcription and translation easier to read for a general audience if I did guess at the vowels).

I advert to such Safaitic inscriptions as a background to the rise of Islam in my book

Note: My new book is a demonstration project for this New Historicism:


    Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires, published October 9, 2018

    Now available at Barnes and Noble

    And Nicola’s Books in Ann Arbor

    And Hachette

And Amazon

Filed Under: Archaeology, History, women

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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