Julius Euting

A perilous 1883 northern Arabia expedition yields notebooks of Aramaic and Nabataean inscriptions, art, and observations.

Julius Euting (1839–1913), a pioneering German scholar, made significant contributions to Punic, Hebrew, and Aramaic studies. After moving to Strasbourg in 1872, Euting embarked on a perilous 1883 expedition to northern Arabia with Charles Huber, aiming to collect ancient texts and investigate archaeological sites. Despite a strained relationship, Euting’s detailed notebooks, rich with observations, anecdotes, and original watercolours, provide a crucial record of Aramaic and Nabataean inscriptions. This book presents Euting’s work in English for the first time, featuring his artwork and William Facey's introduction, which re-evaluates Euting’s role in the discovery of the Tayma Stele and contextualises his journey in 19th-century Arabian exploration.

Julius Euting (1839–1913) was one of the foremost Semitic epigraphists of his generation. A colorful character with an adventurous streak, he set out from Damascus in 1883 with the French-Alsatian explorer, Charles Huber, on a dangerous expedition into the deserts of northern Arabia in quest of ancient inscriptions and graffiti. Along the way, Euting kept a meticulous record of his many discoveries in notebooks and sketchbooks, in which he put his artistic talent to prolific use. This graphic and personal record, never before published in English, includes the story of how the famous Tayma Stele was discovered and how the first thorough record of the Nabataean inscriptions at Madā’in Sālih was made. It is a travel account that entitles Euting to a prominent place among 19th-century explorers of Arabia.

Christopher Metcalf is of Anglo-German parentage, and came to Britain in 2003 to study class and ancient Near Eastern languages, graduating with a DPhil from the University of Oxford. His research interests lie in the literatures and religions of early Greece and the ancient Near East; in these areas he has published The Gods Rich in Praise: Early Greek and Mesopotamian Religious Poetry (2015), and Sumerian Literary Texts in the Schøyen Collection Volume I: Literary Sources on Old Babylonian Religion (2019). He is now working on a book entitled: Servant, Lover, Fool: Three Myths of Ancient Kingship. He has been a Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford, since 2016.

William Facey is a historian, publisher and museum planner. Having read Classics, philosophy and art history at Wadham College, Oxford, he first went to Arabia in 1974, since when he has participated in various museum projects in the region, notably in Saudi Arabia. His books, introductions and articles cover the history, architecture and early photography of the Arabian Peninsula countries, as well as Arab maritime history, Islam among the British, and Western travellers in Arabia, with a focus on those visiting Islam’s holy cities. He founded Arabian Publishing in London in 2002, and ran it until 2015, when it was acquired by Medina Publishing Ltd. His latest book, Charles Huber: France’s Greatest Arabian Explorer, was published in 2022.

Michael C.A. Macdonald is an Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy. His research focuses on ancient literacy, the languages, scripts and inscriptions of northern Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and the ancient history of the nomads of the region. He has been directing epigraphic surveys in the area for the last forty-five years, and currently directs the Badia Epigraphic Survey in Jordan and co-directs the Saudi-British-German project Epigraphy and Landscape in the Hinterland of Taymā’. From 2013 to 2017, he created and directed the Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia (OCIANA) project. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Chicago.

Michael C.A. Macdonald is an Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy. His research focuses on ancient literacy, the languages, scripts and inscriptions of northern Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and the ancient history of the nomads of the region. He has been directing epigraphic surveys in the area for the last forty-five years, and currently directs the Badia Epigraphic Survey in Jordan and co-directs the Saudi-British-German project Epigraphy and Landscape in the Hinterland of Tayma’. From 2013 to 2017, he created and directed the Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia (OCIANA) project. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Chicago.