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Two Safaitic Inscriptions in Comparison to Geographical and Historical Sources about the Arabian Expedition of Aelius Gallus

Paper · 2023 · Adalberto Magnelli and Giuseppe Petrantoni

Summary

The article addresses a long-standing dispute over where Leuke Kome stood. This Nabataean Red Sea harbour was the landing point of the Roman campaign that Aelius Gallus, prefect of Egypt, led into Arabia Felix in 25–24 BC on Augustus' orders. Scholars have proposed Aynuna, al-Wajh, a spot near al-Wajh, or Yanbu. The authors test these against the narrative in Strabo, the Periplus maris Erythraei, the known Petra caravan route and the archaeological picture. They then reinterpret a Safaitic rock inscription, published in 2018, that shows a boat. Where the first editors read an otherwise unattested plural "seas", Petrantoni restores a lost article letter and reads a dual, "the two seas". The authors connect this to a port lying between two sea branches. That fits Aynuna, at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba, better than al-Wajh. A second Safaitic text naming S1ly, possibly the Nabataean minister Syllaeus, is also re-read, but that section is missing from the supplied extract. The work shows how small epigraphic details can settle questions of historical geography.

Key points

  • The ancient sources on the campaign are Strabo (Geogr. XVI 4, 22–24), Pliny, Josephus, Cassius Dio and Periplus 19.
  • Aila (West-Aqaba) is a securely identified Nabataean port. The candidate sites for Leuke Kome are Aynuna, al-Wajh (Nappo 2010), al-Qusayr near al-Wajh (Fiema et al. 2020) and Yanbu (Buschmann).
  • Argument from the march: Strabo says the army needed 30 days to cross the land ruled by Aretas. That duration makes sense only if the march started from Aynuna. Al-Wajh would put the start at the edge of Nabataean territory.
  • Supporting arguments for Aynuna:
    • Strabo probably heard the details from Gallus himself, which makes his account close to the events.
    • The Periplus places the port across from Myous Hormos.
    • The Petra caravan route ended at Leuke Kome.
    • Al-Wajh seems to have hosted only a small harbour.
  • The Safaitic inscription:
    • It comes from the el-Khderī region in the north-eastern Jordanian Badiyah and is dated to the 1st c. BC (Al-Salameen et al. 2018).
    • The new reading is m ’l-bḥrn, with the article (’)l- plus a dual -n ending.
    • The root ʿqd is understood as "bound by contract".

Interesting ideas

  • I1. An unexplained gap in an otherwise evenly spaced line is treated as evidence that a character has been lost, and the missing letter is inferred from context.
  • I2. A form that would be unique in the language (a hapax broken plural) is re-analysed into regular, attested pieces: an article plus a dual suffix.
  • I3. The authors note that the pronoun object of Strabo's verb for "crossed" refers only to Aretas' territory, and this reference narrows the geographic claim.
  • I4. Each candidate site is checked for whether a stated 30-day travel time fits the distance across one ruler's territory.
  • I5. Several independent kinds of evidence (narrative, a navigational text, a trade route, archaeology, an inscription) are made to converge, and each source is weighted by how close it was to the events.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (tokens): When PDF or OCR input shows suspicious spacing, the tokenizer could propose a missing token and flag it, rather than silently merging the neighbouring words.
  • I2 (tokens): The morphology module could rank analyses built from known paradigms above one-off readings, and record why the rare reading was rejected.
  • I3 (frames): Coreference choices can change what a sentence asserts about the world, so the resolution should be logged as an explicit, explainable decision.
  • I4 (world): Durations, distances and region boundaries in the world model could be cross-checked, so that readings implying an implausible itinerary are flagged.
  • I5 (learn): Witness parsers or teacher tiers could be weighted by their demonstrated reliability, and an answer accepted only when independent witnesses agree.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓Sapienza University of RomeRome · Italy36 works · 8,842 citations

📚 Shelves 4The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Arts and Humanities · 9,296 worksSocial Sciences · 744 worksArcheology · 53 worksAnthropology · 8 works

Cite

Cite as Adalberto Magnelli and Giuseppe Petrantoni. 2023. Two Safaitic Inscriptions in Comparison to Geographical and Historical Sources about the Arabian Expedition of Aelius Gallus. Erga-Logoi 11.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.7358/erga-2023-001-mape

@inproceedings{magnelli2023two,
  title = {{Two Safaitic Inscriptions in Comparison to Geographical and Historical Sources about the Arabian Expedition of Aelius Gallus}},
  author = {Adalberto Magnelli and Giuseppe Petrantoni},
  booktitle = {Erga-Logoi 11},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.7358/erga-2023-001-mape},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.7358/erga-2023-001-mape}
}

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