1919. No. 2. A PALMYRENE MAN'S NAME IN ARABIC TRANSCRIPTION. 5 
744 A.D. Of course, nobody can deny the possibility of surgical instruments 
being manufactured in the town during this time. 
According to E. Br. Cooke (see the article »Palmyra« in the Encycl. 
Britan.): >It (Palmyra) was still a wealthy place as late as the r4th 
century «. 
A further point is that the instrument may have been made by a 
manufacturer having a Palmyrene name, but living outside Palmyra in a 
place where the Arabic alphabet was used — but where and when? Here 
again we have to ask an Arabic paleographer. 
Fig. 2. 
The Arabic inscription of the oxaosmjdn. — In photographic reproduction and enlarged 
size (3/3). 
Now, returning to the inscription itself, this consists of only six 
characters: 
o Xx! 
all Arabic, and with the exception of the third one, the £ of a type like 
the modern characters. The ‘ain is more like the Cufic ‘ain with a qua- 
drangular body; the | is straight, the W is written above the base-line of 
the other characters and intersecting the alif in front of it, or rather placed 
on the top of it; the S looks perhaps a little antiquated. 
One might be inclined, at the first sight, to regard the instrument as 
a modern forgery, just because of this rather modern look of the inscribed 
characters; yet, if that were so, the forger would certainly have tried to 
imitate old Cufic characters throughout, or another kind of old Semitic 
alphabets e. g. the Palmyrene, since the name is Palmyrene. Also the 
patina of the bronze is of the real old kind which cannot be imitated. 
The Arabic characters on our instrument are provided with the 
necessary diacritical points, but they have no vowel-signs. Therefore we 
have to ask: how shall the inscription be vocalized? 
As far as I can see, there is no possibility of translating it assuming 
that it represents an Arabic word or sentence; nor can it be interpreted 
as an Arabic nomen proprium. 
