Elijah’s Cave on Mount Carmel and its Inscriptions. Part III

Abstract

The epigraphic corpus comprises a rich and impressive onomasticon, most of it consisting of Greek personal names well known throughout the Greek, Roman and Byzantine worlds. The 148 Greek inscriptions in Elijah’s Cave, discussed in the present article, have yielded an onomasticon of 59 additional Greek, Latin and Semitic proper names. Together with those 30 names that were engraved in the 22 inscriptions discussed in the previous article, the total number is 89 masculine and feminine proper names, some of which are unfamiliar. Some of the Greek inscriptions can be attributed to the Roman era, when the Cave was used as a pagan cult place or shrine to the god Ba‘al Carmel, with Pan and Eros as secondary deities, and others to the early Byzantine period, being a pilgrimage site dedicated to the Prophet Elijah (Elias). The large number of personal names engraved on the walls of the Cave, attest to the many visitors/ pilgrims to the Cave during the Roman and early Byzantine periods. They also indicate the socio-cultural and religious aspects of the people, whether pagans, Jews or Christians, who visited the Cave and engraved their names and other personal details in the hope of commemoration, prosperity and good fortune.