“For ʾĪlmuquh and for Sabaʾ”: Warfare, Religion, and Ideology in the Res Gestae of Karibʾīl Watar bin Dhamarʿalī

NOTICE: Admission to the ISAW Lecture Hall closes 10 minutes after the scheduled start time.

In the early seventh century BCE Karib’īl Watar bin Dhamar‘alī, ruler of the South Arabian kingdom of Saba’, undertook a series of military campaigns through which he managed to bring much of today’s Yemen under his rule. The record of these campaigns is preserved in a monumental inscription at Ṣirwāḥ in Yemen (RES 3945), which speaks repeatedly of Karib’īl’s having waged war on behalf of both the kingdom of Saba’ and its state god ’Īlmuquh. This idea of fighting for god and country, and indeed the very habit of erecting monumental inscriptions in the first place, can be compared with similar trends in the Levant during the early first millennium BCE. From this perspective, early South Arabia can be viewed as an active participant in the ideological developments of the post-Bronze Age Near East.

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