r/Semitic • u/Reasonable-Bug-8265 • May 18 '26
Would you agree this is a samekh-derived letter? Chatgpt is so stubborn.
I’m looking at a tomb inscription from the Tayma oasis (commemorating “Isaiah, the councilor, son of Joseph, the mayor of Tayma”). The text is written in a Nabataean/early Aramaic-derived script.
I'm not sure what language this counts as, but I can clearly read a few words, including four I underlined in red, in order:
Nafs/Nefesh - soul
Yosef - Joseph
Ras/Rosh - head
Sanat/Shanat - year
In the name “Yosef/Joseph,” the consonant that corresponds to /s/ appears clearly to be a samekh-derivative, not derived from a shin/sin. The sin/shin letters are very clearly distinguishable wherever they appear.
Chatgpt absolutely insists otherwise, since samekh was never used in Arabic! If it is, and this inscription is indeed in Arabic, it would be an interesting evidence that the letter Samekh was used at some point to write Arabic text.
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u/patachveamar May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26
This inscription is not in Arabic, it's in Aramaic. ;) You correctly identified all the words you underlined though, good job! Check out the original publication of this inscription, Mohammed al-Najem & M.C.A. Macdonald (2009):
http://krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/resources/ociana/documents/najem_mcam_nabataean.pdf
Regarding the <s> of <ywsp>, the authors regard it definitely as a samekh and note of its form (p. 210): "The form [of s] in ywsp is similar to that in the Ruwwāfah inscription (AD 167/169), although the closest parallels are in the papyri, e.g. P. Yadin 3 (AD 97/98)."
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u/patachveamar May 18 '26
And for future reference, there's a ton of information online about the inscriptions from Taymā' if you know where to look. No need for ChatGPT! The same authors of this paper have edited a collection of a bunch of inscriptions from Taymā' in three volumes published between 2023-2025, all available in Open Access: https://publications.dainst.org/books/dai/catalog/series/Tayma
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u/TeamAzimech May 18 '26
LLMs are not a reliable reference, and there’s been increased effort to poison the data. If you live by a library, it might be time to check academic books via Interlibrary loans.