“Ancient North Arabian Thamudic E Inscriptions from Wadi Hafir—Southern Jordan”
Jordanian Graduate Student Scholarship, 2021–2022
Yarmouk University, Irbid (Jordan)
Epigraphy
Yousef Yhya Aljarrah earned his bachelor’s degree in archaeology at Yarmouk University, where he has continued on to study for a master’s degree in epigraphy. As an undergraduate, he gained fieldwork experience through the excavations at Umm Qais. His epigraphic studies have included pre-Islamic Arabian languages, Greek and Roman, and biblical Hebrew.
In his MA thesis, “Ancient North Arabian Thamudic E Inscriptions from Wadi Hafir, Southern Jordan,” which is being supervised by Prof. Hani Hayajneh, dean of the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology, Aljarrah will examine a large selection of yet unpublished inscriptions in Hismaic, a variation of the Ancient North Arabian script, and their accompanying petroglyphs. First recorded in 2005–2006 and 2012 by Dr. Glenn Corbett in coordination with the Department of Antiquities, these are untapped sources for social and economic conditions, lifeways, and the history of the region in the last century BC and first several centuries AD. All aspects of the inscriptions—translations, philology, morphology, syntax—will be studied in the context of others found in the region. The petroglyphs, among which are tribal emblems (wasms) and scenes of hunting and herding, will be similarly studied and analyzed in their cultural, social, and religious contexts as reflections of daily life and as symbols.
