1919. No. 2. A PALMYRENE MAN'S NAME IN ARABIC TRANSCRIPTION. 9 
Further he says of the »'Athi« that it is »une divinité du genre de 
Tvyr, une divinité présidant ä la succession des temps et des destinées 
humaines, role qui, d'après les croyances de l'antiquité, rentre dans les 
attributions lunaires«. 
He reminds of the divinities "4Jac (mentioned by Philon of Byblos), 
"ES«oz (found by Waddington in the Hauran-inscriptions), and ‘Ady, com- 
pares them with “SY and NOY, and thinks that they are all variants of 
the same word. 
This moon-god has, he says, been worshipped in Syria, Mesopotamia 
and partly Asia minor during a very long space of time. — In this con- 
nexion one might be tempted to call attention to the old Sumerian word 
for »moon«, the é/r or tu, a word which the sumeriologist Dr. C. J. Ball 
(Oxford) thinks may be compared with the Ado in Suidas, who says: 
»Al00 ... 5 othr, mage Naldaiois<, and the Afdyz in Hesychius. 
The word »Athi«!) has also, according to de Vogüé, been found in 
a Syriac phragment published by Cureton, designating »un personnage 
mythique de l'Adiabene:, a mythical being worshipped by the Syrians, 
From the Greck transcription A9nazaßos we should be able to find 
out the vocalisation of the I in AN (NY) by means of the Greck y; how- 
ever, again we have to ask the Greek philologist: how was the y pro- 
nounced? as an e- or an rsound? 
Now, regarding the second component of the Palmyrene name, the 
22%”, we must be allowed to conclude from the Greck -«z«foc that the 
I 
y should be furnished with an a-vowel (certainly a pathakh — there is no 
alif after the Arabic zh and from the Arabic transcription that the D had 
a qames. 
As a result of all these considerations we may be allowed to regard 
the inscription on the spathomele as an Arabic transcription of the Pal- 
myrene-Aramaic personal name 2pynN (or 3pyny) and romanize it: 
At akab, 
yet remembering that the vowel / is uncertain. 
! De Vogüé transcribes the word differently in different places in his work »Syrie Cen 
trale, Inscript. Sémit.« 
