‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’: Once more on the Gǝʿǝz inscription of Ham (RIÉ no. 232)

First published by Giorgio Brunetti in 1927 and re-edited by Carlo Conti Rossini in 1939, the inscription of Ham (RIÉ no. 232) has since received attention from several scholars in Ethiopian and Eritrean studies, from Ugo Monneret de Villard to Enrico Cerulli, Sergew Hable Selassie, and, in the last twenty-five years, Gianfranco Fiaccadori and Manfred Kropp. The latter author has proposed a precise dating to 873 CE, before the recent appearance of the posthumous contribution by Abraham Johannes Drewes, who is the last one to have systematically discussed the inscription. Without pretending to solve all problems that arise from the inscription, the scope of the present note is to provide a fresh re-examination of some of the palaeographic and linguistic features of the Ham inscription, which remains a Gǝʿǝz epigraphic document of exceptional importance for the Ethiopian and Eritrean Middle Ages, and to propose a dating to 23 December 974 CE.