ABSTRACT
Our work on this text arose from a visit to Madā'in Ṣāliḥ to work on the inscriptions and we would like to begin by thanking Dr. Abdullah H. Masry of the Department of Antiquities in Riyadh for his kind assistance. Since JS 17 has generally been counted with the Aramaic texts, it was my responsibility. However, since we wish to argue that the inscription is in fact in Arabic, the main philological part of the discussion is found below in Part II. It may be noted immediately that it will not be possible here to discuss in detail all previous studies of this text or all aspects of it. We hope to set this out in a lengthier publication.
