ṢANʿĀʾ National Museum - Part III. Collection of Funerary Stelae from the Jawf valley

Abstract

This book is the third volume of the collection of epigraphic and archaeological artifacts from the Jawf valley, kept at the National Museum of Ṣanʿāʾ, and is devoted to a collection of funerary stelae. The four categories introduced in the first study have been maintained for the classification of the new stelae; this stylistic distinction still appears to be the most relevant feature to highlight chronological evolutions. These categories are: Eye Stelae (mainly between the 8th and the 5th century BC); Bas relief stelae (between the 5th and the 2nd century BC); High relief stelae (c. 4th-3rd centuries BC); Stelae with incised face elements (mainly between the 4th and the 1st century BC). The onomastic study and several comparisons with comparable productions from North-Arabia has lead us to the question of the origin of this production and/or the geographic origin of the population using these stelae. Do we have to consider, as it has been asserted in the past, that these stelae where made by people coming from the North? Or that they were of Bedouin origin? Or belonged to an unhappy few Middle and North Arabian caravan traders that died and were buried in the Jawf valley? Answering this issue is uneasy. Cultural and commercial links between North and South-Arabia were complex. It is well known that the inhabitants from the Jawf valley played an important role in the incense trade from the seventh century onwards. Trade counters were established in the middle and the North of the Arabian Peninsula and commercial relationships stretched out as far as Gaza, Tyr, Sidon, Egypt, Mesopotamia or Greece.