I
recently found a terrific academic article on ancient Nahom, or
rather, the ancient Nihm tribe of Yemen and its tribal lands, a
region identified on several maps with names like Nehem, Nehhm, or
Nahm.
Abstract:
The 1999 excavation of the Bar’an complex at Ma’rib in
Yemen yielded identical Sabaean inscriptions on three votive altars.
These dedication texts list the donor's grandfather as a member of
the Nihm tribe, definitively establishing the presence of the tribal
name to c.2,800 years ago.
The
name, rare in southern Arabia, can then be traced through a variety
of other inscriptional, topographical and historical sources down to
the present-day tribe and its lands. While the consonants NHM refer
to “dressing stone by chipping,” and may appear in a
variety of contexts, an etymological examination of its Semitic roots
yields interesting pointers to the possible origins of the name.
Multiple
links in these roots to terminology such as “consoling,”
“comforting” and “complaining” have led to
the name being long associated with death and the processes of
mourning.
This
paper, therefore, suggests the possibility of the name being
specifically associated with a place of burial, perhaps a connection
in the distant past to the extensive, still poorly understood, desert
necropolis at the ‘Alam, Ruwayk and Jidran complex north of
Ma’rib.
Being
able to firmly document, a specific tribal and topographical name for
almost three millennia is significant. Such continuity of a tribal
name, perhaps unique in Arabia, would have implications for our
understanding of the processes of tribal naming, structure, and
movements in pre-Islamic southern Arabia generally.
Aston
reviews the three inscriptions, their meaning, location, and dating.
Dating to before Nephi's day, three altars have been found in Marib
bearing an inscription mentioning the donor, a member of the Nihm
tribe.
They
were given as gifts to a pagan temple in Marib, which is somewhat to
the west of current Nihm tribal boundaries (the region marked Nehem
or Nehhm on some maps), suggesting either that the Nihm tribe's
boundaries or scope of influence was larger anciently than it is
today, or perhaps Marib had the nearest holy place to give these
gifts.
Aston explores the etymology of the Nihm name in Arabic
and in Hebrew:
In
attempting to understand its possible origins, the first point
to note is that the consonants NHM are exceedingly rare; they do not
appear anywhere else in Arabia as a toponym. NHM is attested only
rarely in southern Arabian writings as a personal or tribal name; it
also appears a handful of times in northern Arabian Safaitic texts.
NHM
itself has two closely related Semitic roots: NH ̣M [that should
be H with a dot underneath] and NHM. The first root, NH ̣M,
has the voiceless pharyngeal h ̣ consonant, giving it
the basic meaning of 'to comfort, console, to be
sorry' and is used in Arabic (as nah ̣ama) to refer to a 'soft
groan, sigh, moan'.
Likewise,
in ancient Hebrew this root is commonly used in connection with
mourning a death. Indeed, David Damrosch notes that:
It
appears twenty-five times in the narrative books of the Bible,
and in every case it is associated with death. In family settings, it
is applied in instances involving the death of an immediate family
member (parent, sibling or child); in national settings, it has to do
with the survival or impending extermination of an entire people. At heart, nah ̣am
means 'to mourn', to come to terms with a death.
The
second root, NHM, has the simple voiceless laryngeal h and is
also found in Hebrew where it means to 'roar', 'complain' and 'be
hungry'. In ancient Egyptian the root refers ‘to roar, thunder,
shout’, which is similar to the Arabic meanings ‘to
growl, groan, roar, suffer from hunger, to complain'.
This
association with hunger may be connected to the fasting that was
often part of mourning for the dead in ancient Yemen and still in
many cultures today. It is this second root, NHM, that appears in
every known occurrence of the name in epigraphic South Arabian text,
whether Sabaean, Hadramitic or Minean in origin.
Here,
it usually refers to ‘dressed masonry’ or the ‘dressing
of stone by chipping’....
The
ancient Nihm tribe's wealth and influence may have been related to
their expertise in stonework, demonstrated perhaps by the carved
stone altars given by one wealthy man to the temple in Marib. That
expertise may be associated with the vast complex of stone tombs in
the ancient burial associated with Nehem. Aston notes that there are
other ancient burial regions, much smaller than the huge ones to the
north, that are in the present Nihm tribal boundaries.
Aston's
article has interesting insights for students of the Book of Mormon.
One of the earliest Hebraic word plays recognized in the text is the
one involving Nahom, a place named by others where Lehi's family
buried Ishmael.
Immediately
after Nahom is introduced at the end of verse 34 in 1 Nephi 16, we
read of the mourning, complaining, and murmuring of the
daughters of Ishmael, whose complaints include the hunger that they
have suffered, and their fear that they will now perish with hunger
(1 Nephi 16:35,36).
This
connects nicely with the meanings that Hebrew speakers would
associate with Nahom.
The Hebraic wordplay was interesting
internal evidence for the plausibility of the Book of Mormon, long
before the discovery by a BYU professor in 1978 than Nehem was
actually on some old high-end maps of Arabia.
Later
we would recognize that this region is in exactly the right place for
an eastward turn that could then lead directly to a remarkable
candidate, nearly due east of Nahom as Nephi wrote, for the
previously ridiculed place, Bountiful. I find that cool.
That
was before German archaeologists discovered the altars at Marib
bearing the ancient Nihm tribal name, showing that the tribe was in
the area and influential in Lehi's era (well before, actually). So
Nehem is not a modern name. It's rooted in antiquity, with hard
evidence chiseled in stone to prove it. I also find that to be cool.
Aston, as you may know, is LDS and well aware of the
implications for the Book of Mormon, which he does not raise in this
publication. While his interest in the Book of Mormon and Lehi's
trail is well known, other scholars
and officials also recognize his academic passion for Arabia and
especially for preserving and investigating the surprising region at
Khor Kharfot and Wadi Sayq, a rare gem in the Arabian Peninsula that
also is a leading candidate for the long ballyhooed place called
Bountiful.
Efforts
are underway through his Khor Kharfot Foundation
to increase research and preserve the biology of that delicate
region, where modern diversion of its water supply is already
jeopardizing some of the magnificent trees in the area. It's a
remarkable place, a biological and geographical gem in Arabia that
needs your help. LDS or not, I hope you'll consider making a donation
to this worthy cause.
Warren Aston
has a new book coming out soon that promises to be another impressive
and original volume with evidence and extensive insights related to
the Book of Mormon. Lehi & Sariah in Arabia: The Old World Setting of the Book of Mormon
is the book, and I can't wait to read it!
Jeff Lindsay has been defending the Church on the Internet since 1994, when he launched his
LDSFAQ website under JeffLindsay.com. He has also long been blogging about LDS matters on
the blog Mormanity (mormanity.blogspot.com). Jeff is a longtime resident of Appleton,
Wisconsin, who recently moved to Shanghai, China, with his wife, Kendra.
He works for an Asian corporation as head of intellectual property. Jeff and Kendra are the parents of 4 boys, 3 married and the the youngest on a mission.
He is a former innovation and IP consultant, a former professor, and former Corporate Patent
Strategist and Senior Research Fellow for a multinational corporation.
Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins and Mukund Karanjikar are authors of the book Conquering
Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University and is a registered US
patent agent. He has more than 100 granted US patents and is author of numerous publications.
Jeff's hobbies include photography, amateur magic, writing, and Mandarin Chinese.