Les systèmes de datation dans l’Est de l’Afrique du Nord à la fin de l’Antiquité et à l’époque byzantine

Abstract

The chronological Systems in the Eastern part of North Africa in late Antiquity and in the Byzantine period The author resumes, bringing it up to date, the enquiry submitted by him to the 3rd Congress of Epigraphy in 1957. Contrary to Mauretania, the Eastern part of North Africa had no chronological system of its own. Consequently it used consular dating, as the rest of Empire generally did — although very moderately, especially in the epitaphs — up to the arrival of Vandals, and next sporadically in that part of Numidia which was handed back to the Empire. As early as the capture of Carthage in 429, Vandals adopted the regnal year. Yet the latter was usually left anonymous under Genserie, or disguised by its being styled “Carthaginian era”, which secondarily remained under the next reigns. Following the Byzantine reconquest, Justinian in 537 imposed to the whole Empire dating by regnal year and indiction, although retaining consular date. It can be verified that under this reign the emperor is unevenly mentionned in regnal dates, which after him remain rare and are eventually superseded by indiction and mention of the ruling emperor, both on coins and epitaphs. As for consulate, it appears only once in an official deed, a very late one (636). Indiction is by far the most common system (several thousands epitaphs). There is no reason for thinking that in Africa it could have antedated the reconquest, which it also outlives in the few late dated christian inscriptions from XIth century Tripolitania and Kairouan.