Foreign Sailors on Socotra: The Inscriptions and Drawings from the Cave Hoq

Foreign Sailors on Socotra: 

The Inscriptions and Drawings from the Cave Hoq 

(Vergleichende Studien Zu Antike Und Orient) Hardcover – 30 Mar 2013

by Ingo Strauch

• Hardcover: 592 pages
• Publisher: Hempen Verlag (30 Mar. 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3934106919

Several years ago a group of Belgian speleologists of the Socotra Karst Project made a spectacular discovery. Deep inside a huge cave on the island Socotra they came across a large number of inscriptions, drawings and archaeological objects. As further investigation showed, they were left by sailors who visited the island between the 1st c. BC and the 6th c. AD. The majority of the texts are written in the Indian Brahmi script, but there are also inscriptions in South-Arabian, Ethiopian, Greek, Palmyrene and Bactrian scripts and languages. This corpus of nearly 250 texts and drawings thus constitutes one of the main sources for the investigation of Indian Ocean trade networks in the first centuries of our era. The present book is the first comprehensive edition and study of this material. It comprises contributions by an international group of scholars who have been working on these new discoveries for a couple of years (in alphabetical order): Mikhail D. Bukharin (Moscow), Peter De Geest (Brussels), Hédi Dridi (Neuchâtel), Maria Gorea (Paris), Julian Jansen Van Rensburg (Brussels), Christian Julien Robin (Paris), Bharati Shelat (Ahmedabad), Nicholas Sims-Williams (London, Oxford) and Ingo Strauch (Berlin). 

Contents:

Acknowledgements. 11

Introduction. 13

Ingo Strauch

PART 1: THE CAVE HOQ

MATERIALS

Catalogue of inscriptions and drawings. 25

Ingo Strauch, with contributions by Christian Julien Robin, Mikhail Bukharin, and Nicholas Sims-Williams

The archaeological remains in the cave Hoq. 219

Hédi Dridi

The cave Hoq and the Socotra Karst Project. 231

Peter De Geest

PART 2: THE INSCRIPTIONS FROM HOQ: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS

INDIA AND SOCOTRA

Ingo Strauch

1. The Indian inscriptions from Hoq: the epigraphical perspective. 254

2. The Brahmī scripts of Hoq: the palaeographical perspective. 286

3. The Indian participants of trade: the historical perspective. 343

4. The Indian drawings at Hoq cave. 361

5. Socotra and the "Indian connection": facts and fictions. 366

6. The Indian inscriptions and drawings of Hoq: a summary. 404

Appendix I: The Gujarati stone inscriptions from Ras Howlef (Socotra) (Bharati Shelat). 407

Appendix II: Inscribed stones from Delisha in the journal of Ormsby (Julian Jansen van Rensburg). 433

SOUTH ARABIA, ETHIOPIA AND SOCOTRA

Christian Julien Robin

1. Sudarabiques et Aksūmites à Suquṭra d'après les inscriptions de Ḥōq. 438

2. Suquṭra dans les inscriptions de l'Arabie du Sud. 443

PALMYRA AND SOCOTRA

Maria Gorea

1. The Palmyrene tablette "De Geest". 447

Appendix I: Description of the tablet and parallels (Hédi Dridi). 458

Appendix II: Radiocarbon analysis of splinters (Hédi Dridi). 461

2. The sea and inland trade of Palmyra. 463

Appendix III: Remarks on the Egyptian branch of the Palmyrene trade (Hédi Dridi). 486

Appendix IV: Les Palmyréniens en Arabie du Sud (Christian Julien Robin). 488

THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD AND SOCOTRA

Mikhail D. Bukharin

1. The Greek inscriptions at Hoq. 494

2. Greeks on Socotra: Commercial contacts and early Christian missions. 501

Concluding remarks: The discoveries in the cave Hoq: a short evaluation of their historical meaning. 540

Ingo Strauch