Nouveaux documents sabéens provenant de Kamna du VIIIe-VIIe siècle avant J.-C.

The four new inscriptions published here (Kamna 30 A, B, 31, 32 and 33) shed new light on the relationship between the kingdom of Saba and the city-states of the Jawf (Yemen). They provide new synchronisms between the kings of Saba and those of Kamna, allowing the proposal of a more precise chronology of the city-states of the Jawf for the second half of the eighth century and the early seventh century BC. As the new texts show, both at the lignuistic and content level, in this period Kamna seems to be in the Sabaean orbit, but benefits from a certain degree of autonomy, which is evident in the use of the Minaic language alongside Sabaic, by the worship of the city's pantheon alongside the Sabean gods, and by the mention of local kings. At a cultural level, Kamna 30 is particularly interesting as it is one of the few witnesses of "foreign" marriages of the Sabaean people: it records two parallel texts, one by a Sabaean man (in Sabaic) and the other one by his wife from Kamna (in the local Minaic language).