The Amran Tablets or ''ʿAmrān Tablets'' are a series of ancient bronze plaques written in the

Sabaean language Sabaean, also known as Sabaic, was an Old South Arabian language spoken between c. 1000 BC and the 6th century AD, by the Sabaeans. It was used as a written language by some other peoples of the ancient civilization of South Arabia, including t ...

found in the town of

'Amran ʿAmrān ( ar, عمران; Old South Arabian: 𐩲𐩣𐩧𐩬 ''ʿmrn'') is a small city in western central Yemen. It is the capital of the 'Amran Governorate, and was formerly in the Sana'a Governorate. It is located by road northwest of the Y ...

, Yemen. Now part of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

's ancient

Middle Eastern The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europea ...

collection, they form an important

corpus Corpus is Latin for "body". It may refer to: Linguistics * Text corpus, in linguistics, a large and structured set of texts * Speech corpus, in linguistics, a large set of speech audio files * Corpus linguistics, a branch of linguistics Music * ...

of information on religious and military practices in

South Arabia South Arabia () is a historical region that consists of the southern region of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia, mainly centered in what is now the Republic of Yemen, yet it has also historically included Najran, Jizan, Al-Bahah, and 'As ...

between the 1st Century BC and 3rd Century AD.

Discovery

The Amran Tablets seem to have been discovered in the mid nineteenth century during the construction of a house at the town of ʿAmrān, which lies just to the north of the city of

Sana'a Sanaa ( ar, صَنْعَاء, ' , Yemeni Arabic: ; Old South Arabian: 𐩮𐩬𐩲𐩥 ''Ṣnʿw''), also spelled Sana'a or Sana, is the capital and largest city in Yemen and the centre of Sanaa Governorate. The city is not part of the Gover ...

Yemen Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the northeast and ...

. 28 different panels were unearthed at the time (although more may have been melted down and destroyed) which were subsequently presented to the

in 1862 by Brigadier-Colonel William Coghlan and Captain Robert Playfair of the

Royal Artillery The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises t ...

regiment. Coghlan had been appointed

Political Resident In the British Empire a Political Resident or Political Agent was the incumbent of an official diplomatic position involving both consular duties and liaison function. A Consul or Consul-General has largely consular functions, such as looking afte ...

and Commandment in

Aden Aden ( ar, عدن ' Yemeni: ) is a city, and since 2015, the temporary capital of Yemen, near the eastern approach to the Red Sea (the Gulf of Aden), some east of the strait Bab-el-Mandeb. Its population is approximately 800,000 peopl ...

in 1854, 15 years after the Colony of Aden had become part of the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...

Description

All the plaques were cast in bronze through the

lost-wax Lost-wax casting (also called "investment casting", "precision casting", or ''cire perdue'' which has been adopted into English from the French, ) is the process by which a duplicate metal sculpture (often silver, gold, brass, or bronze) is ...

casting process and inscribed in the Sabaean script. They probably would have been attached to the walls of a temple as

votive A votive offering or votive deposit is one or more objects displayed or deposited, without the intention of recovery or use, in a sacred place for religious purposes. Such items are a feature of modern and ancient societies and are generally ...

offerings to the gods. In the panel illustrated on this page, the inscription identifies the god

Almaqah Almaqah or Almuqh ( xsa, 𐩱𐩡𐩣𐩤𐩠; ar, المقه; gez, አልመቀህ) was the Moon god of the ancient Yemeni kingdom of Saba'. He was also worshipped in the kingdom of Dʿmt, which later became the kingdom of Aksum in Ethiopia ...

, who was the principle deity in the kingdom of

Saba Saba may refer to: Places * Saba (island), an island of the Netherlands located in the Caribbean Sea * Şaba (Romanian for Shabo), a town of the Odesa Oblast, Ukraine * Sabá, a municipality in the department of Colón, Honduras * Saba (river), ...

. The tablet records that it was dedicated in the name of Riyan and his brothers, the grandsons of Marthad from the tribe of Dhu Amran. The top of the plaque shows a pair of sphinxes flanking a lotus blossom and framed by two

date palms ''Phoenix dactylifera'', commonly known as date or date palm, is a flowering plant species in the palm family, Arecaceae, cultivated for its edible sweet fruit called dates. The species is widely cultivated across northern Africa, the Middle Eas ...

. At the bottom of the plaque are floral patterns including two rosettes. Other plaques in the series highlight the uneasy relationship between the rival kingdoms of

and the Arabs of the Jawf. The text of the panels refer to a number of military conflicts and battles that raged between them, which were often about controlling the trade of

frankincense Frankincense (also known as olibanum) is an aromatic resin used in incense and perfumes, obtained from trees of the genus '' Boswellia'' in the family Burseraceae. The word is from Old French ('high-quality incense'). There are several species ...

and

myrrh Myrrh (; from Semitic, but see '' § Etymology'') is a gum-resin extracted from a number of small, thorny tree species of the genus '' Commiphora''. Myrrh resin has been used throughout history as a perfume, incense and medicine. Myrrh m ...

, two

aromatic In chemistry, aromaticity is a chemical property of cyclic ( ring-shaped), ''typically'' planar (flat) molecular structures with pi bonds in resonance (those containing delocalized electrons) that gives increased stability compared to satur ...

products exclusive to the region of South Arabia that generated considerable wealth for the local population.

References

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Discovery

Description

References

Further reading