by Laurent Gorgerat and Robert Wenning, with a note by Laila Nehmé
As promised in our first report L. Nehmé kindly gave us her reading of the second inscription of the Aṣlaḥ-triclinium in October 2011 for this report. Although the inscription is now published Nehmé 2012: 163–164 no. MP 4. , we can present her full note here and like to thank her for this helpful support.
This inscription is carved in the middle of the right (south) wall of the triclinium (Fig. 30). It was copied by J. T. Milik in 1955, photographed and copied again in 2002 by L. Nehmé. It is 1.38 m long, the first š is 13 cm, the average height of the letters is 12 cm.
J.T. Milik’s reading is the following: ʾnt škb ly gʾ ʾnt šlm šlm šlm, which he translates: You compensated me by giving the klinè to me, Geʾ, you, Šalim, Šalim, may be safe. He interprets it as the brief summary of a legal act between two persons who may have been slaves because they do not give their patronym. He adds that it may refer to the cession of a seat in the triclinium to a person who was not part of the owner’s family.
In Milik’s reading, ʾnt is the second person personal pronoun, škb is a „death bed“, attested in the form mškbʾ in Nabataean JSNab40, „resting bed“; on this word, see Nehmé 2005–2006, p. 206. and ly is the preposition l- + the enclitic pronoun of first person singular -y. Geʾ and Šalim are interpreted as personal names. Finally, Milik suggests that the third line may have been written by another hand than the first two. According to him, this line may be the signature of a partner of the legal act.
However attractive this reading and interpretation are, they conflict with the traces of the letters which are presently visible on the stone. Indeed, as one can see on the photograph, the reading of the text is very difficult because it is obscured by the traces left on the wall by the stone-cutting tools. The facsimile we propose is based both on the copy we made in situ and on a careful examination of several digital photographs taken in 2002 (Fig. 31).
If Milik’s reading was not available, we would only be able to read the following sequence of letters: ʾ{l/n}{t}----škbʾ{l/n}ʾg{d/r}ʾš{b/n}t {b/n}wb{.}ʾl šlm šlm šlm. We may recognize, with some uncertainty, ʾ{nt}, „you“ but also ʾ{lt}. škbʾ can safely be read and a m before the š, erased by the chip in the rock, is not completely impossible. The mention of a „resting bed“, a couch, a bench, would not be surprising in a triclinium. Contrary to Milik’s reading, the d or r after the g is certain and the same is true for the š which follows. Therefore, the rest of Milik’s reading cannot be accepted, especially since he missed the few letters which were traced below the end of the first line, in which we may see, {l}{r}bʾ{l} if the second letter does not have a loop (it is very difficult to say from the photograph).
As for lines 2 and 3, they are in fact more or less aligned and since they clearly form three times the sequence of letters šlm, there is no particular reason to think that some of them are personal names (šālim for instance) while others would be the greeting word „may be safe“. Thus, all that can be safely said about this text is that it probably mentions one of the benches of the Aṣlaḥ-triclinium but it is useless to speculate on the meaning of the rest because there are too many uncertainties in the reading.