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It’s Tuesday, oral exams period coming up, so a (temporary?) end to this Libyco-Berber tombstones series. But first: some really puzzling stuff. A series of inscriptions was found in 1938 in Mechta el Maza close to Bouchegouf (ex-Duvivier), Guelma region, eastern Algeria (RIL 1076-1091) 🧵

Maarten Kossmann@maartenkossmann.bsky.social

Forgot to quote tweet the Sunday post on my Monday post, so hereby! bsky.app/profile/maar...

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Some of these have the normal template: two or more columns, a name, a patronym, some function names - that kind of stuff. But others are quite different: extremely short inscriptions with three or four letters in a single column. This is very rare elsewhere.

Some of these have “unique” texts - that is, the text does not recur in the rest of the Mechta el Maza sub-corpus: RIL 1085 ŠLT RIL 1086 DFT RIL 1087 KRF They could be names, but why are all of them three letters? (some names are like this, many have more or less letters) Copies by Rodary (RIL)

And then we have the following three texts. They all start in M followed by the letter “à bassine” (~ ︺) and one or two letters. RIL 1088 M︺T RIL 1089 M︺T RIL 1090 M︺⁖)) (RIL 1090 both copy and rubbing provided) In other texts, the letter à bassine stands for M, so probably here too.