Altsüdarabische Inschriften auf Metall

In recent years, in addition to the extremely numerous stone monuments from ancient South Arabia, the far smaller number of preserved luxury, cultic, and utilitarian objects made of metal have received increased attention. These can be assigned to the ancient South Arabian culture. Most of the interest has been directed towards the study of their material composition and manufacturing technique as well as their stylistic classification, while the texts applied to the objects have been treated independently in separate works. In the present volume, all aspects important for the evaluation of Old South Arabian inscribed metal objects are now brought together for the first time in a generally understandable and clear form. Thus, a first section is devoted to the properties of the metals, the technical processes used in metalworking in antiquity, and the possible sources of raw materials. Furthermore, the basic workings of the scientific methods of investigation that were used in the analysis of some of the metal objects discussed in this volume are described. After an overview of the text genres represented on the metal objects, a catalog of the inscriptions follows. The complete texts are presented in transcription and translation and are accompanied by a commentary pointing out their linguistic and textual peculiarities as well as deviating translations. In addition, all relevant information such as origin, place of discovery, dating, and literature published to date on the pieces in question are listed in concise form. In this way, the volume is intended to serve as a basis and aid for further research that wants to deal comprehensively with the written metal monuments preserved from ancient southern Arabia.