Greek Epitaphs Research Articles

ПАМЯТНИКИ XIX – НАЧАЛА ХХ ВЕКА НА ДВУХ СТАРЫХ БАХЧИСАРАЙСКИХ КЛАДБИЩАХ

The article is devoted to the study of tombstones of the XIX – early XX centuries in the city of Bakhchysarai originating from two necropolises from the cemetery on Partisanskaya Street and from the so-called Russian Settlement. They are a vivid example of provincial Christian cemeteries. The author describes the history of the study of necropolises, their current state and problematic protection issues. It is important to note that during the work the time of foundation of the Bakhchysarai civil necropolis (on Partizanskaya Street) was specified – no later than 1813. The most interesting epitaphs are also given, testifying to the Greek employees of the Greek Battalion of Balaklava and participants in the Crimean War. An important feature is that the article contains translations of Greek epitaphs, including those compiled in honor of immigrants from Trebizond and the Chios island. The author considers epitaphs reflecting the social status, ranks of the state civil service of persons buried in Bakhchysarai. The practice of using common epitaphs and borrowing poetic texts of epitaphs on later tombstones was analyzed. Frequent and rare forms of gravestone monuments are considered too.

Epitaph of Merki Found in Hambukol

The article offers editio princeps of a Greek epitaph discovered during the archaeological work of the Canadian Mission in Hambukol, a locality situated on the right-hand bank of the Nile, several kilometres to the north of Dongola, the capital of the Christian Nubian Kingdom of Makuria. The epitaph, constructed with the prayer ‘God of spirits and all flesh’, is dated to the ninth century on contextual and palaeographic grounds. It commemorates a certain Merki, who, according to the text, followed a splendid career in the state apparatus, which led from notarios to protodomestikos, i.e. the head of the royal office dealing with agriculture and fiscal matters.

From the Editor

From the Editor Andy Cain This issue features a stellar line-up of articles whose subject matters span the whole chronological spectrum of Late Antiquity. The first three articles center around Christianity in North Africa. In her compelling study, Sabine Huebner argues that P.Mil.Vogl. 6.287 is the earliest extant transcript of a trial of Christians lacking the hagiographic embellishments that typically adorn martyr acts. Diane Fruchtman performs a novel reading of Commodian’s Instructiones, demonstrating that Commodian makes sophisticated use of the acrostic form in this poetic treatise to convey a series of deeper messages about the individual Christian’s identity and relationship with God. Stanisław Adamiak probes the propagandistic dimensions of the Donatists’ practice of rebaptism and makes the case that they did not rebaptize their converts nearly as often as most modern scholars assume. The next four articles form their own subdisciplinary cluster in that they focus on epigraphic matters. John Fabiano offers a new edition and re-contextualization of a Latin inscription found at Sant’Omobono in 1937 which, in his persuasive interpretation, documents the reorganization of the collegium fabrum tignariorum between 296 and 312. Ivan Basić and Maja Zeman provide an exhaustive historical-philological commentary on a Greek epitaph from an early Christian sarcophagus, identifying vital information about the deceased and determining that this epitaph is the earliest epigraphic evidence for Dalmatia being part of the western Roman Empire in the fifth century. Anna Sitz analyzes Roman-period inscriptions from the Temple of Aphrodite at Aphrodisias and contends that the architects of the church built over this temple kept these inscriptions on display as reminders to the citizens of Aphrodisias of their shared civic history. In her illuminating study, Helen Foxhall Forbes examines inscriptions of Anglo-Saxon pilgrims’ names on the walls of the shrine of S. Michele at Monte Sant’Angelo sul Gargano and explores the fascinating insights that these graffiti give us into the pilgrims’ personal sense of religious identity. Kristina Sessa rounds out this issue’s articles with her substantial review article critiquing recent major publications which pin the putative “decline and fall” of the Roman Empire on climate change and a pandemic, and she offers some cogent methodological correctives to this trend as well as concrete suggestions for future inquiry in this exciting field of research. [End Page 1] Copyright © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press

What Can Epigraphy Tell Us about Partitio Imperii in Fifth-Century Dalmatia?

The issue at hand is a Greek epitaph inscribed on an early Christian sarcophagus found in St. Elijah’s Church on the island of Lopud off the coast of Dalmatia in the southern Adriatic. We present a description of the monument, a reading, and dating of the epitaph, as well as epigraphic, anthroponomic, and historical analysis and provide archaeological-topographic context of the find. We identify the name of the deceased (Isaac) and origin (northern Syria or Asia Minor) and determine the date (17 October 452). In particular, we analyze the mention of the western Roman consul in the dating formula, establishing it as the first reliable epigraphic corroboration of the fact that Dalmatia was a part of the western Roman Empire in the fifth century.

The 1930s excavations at the YMCA site in Jerusalem and the Byzantine ‘Monastery of the Iberians’

This article presents a reevaluation of the finds discovered in 1930s, during salvage excavations by J. Iliffe on behalf of the British Mandatory Department of Antiquities, conducted west of the YMCA site in Jerusalem. One of the most important discoveries made on the site was the Greek epitaph of Bishop Samuel – the first inscription found in Palestine mentioning Iberians (Georgians), which launched the archaeological study of the Georgian antiquities of the Holy Land. The documentation of YMCA excavations, preserved in the Mandatory Archive of the Israel Antiquities Authority contains the large quantity of unpublished materials, including field photos and plans, allowed for the complete layout of the large Byzantine complex to be distinguished, interpreted by its excavator as a monastery. The relationship of the YMCA site to the Georgian monastic community is discussed in connection with other evidence related to the "Monastery of the Iberians" – a monastic institution of Byzantine Jerusalem, known both from the historical sources and independent epigraphic evidence.

A New Jewish Epitaph Commemorating Care for Orphans

This article presents an edition of a previously unpublished Greek epitaph in the J. Willard Marriot Library at the University of Utah. The inscription commemorates a woman by the name of Helene who is identified as a Ἰουδαία and who was remembered for showing love to orphans. While Helene is identified as a Ἰουδαία she is also styled as an Ἄµα, a title that otherwise only occurs for certain Christian women in late antique Egypt. Thus, this inscription appears to resist a straightforward classification as it employs terminology that straddles religious categories.1

The Justinianic plague: evidence from the dated Greek epitaphs of Byzantine Palestine and Arabia

The Justinianic plague, the first historically attested pandemic of bubonic plague, has recently made headlines with the publication of the genomic analysis of the bacterium responsible for its outbreak.1 Though its primary contribution is to the field of epidemiology, this study is a welcome addition to the growing body of research on the first plague pandemic, for which the literary evidence is still the main source of information.2 A number of attempts have been made to find non-literary evidence for this plague in order to substantiate the literary evidence and gain insight into areas for which the literary sources are insufficient, and the present study joins those by analyzing the corpus of dated Greek epitaphs of the 4th through 7th c. A.D. from the Byzantine provinces of Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda, Palaestina Tertia (or Salutaris),3 and Arabia. The findings appear to confirm the traditional dating of the outbreak of plague to 541, and may even suggest that this first wave was particularly virulent; they are less informative about the succession of later waves.

Cut these words into my stone: ancient Greek epitaphs

Cut these words into my stone: ancient Greek epitaphs

Ares: Brother, Commander, Deity or Son? A New Interpretation of the Ares Tombstone

The so-called Ares tombstone, currently kept in the British Museum under inventory number GRA 1973.4-22.1 [Sc. 2271], is one of the most beautiful examples of Roman sepulchral art to come out of Egypt. Although the stela has been studied many times before, scholars are still intrigued by its problematical relief scene, depicting two full-length standing male figures with similar facial features. The Greek epitaph, inscribed underneath the relief, informs us that the stela was set up to commemorate the veteran Ares. Another Ares is mentioned, but his identity and relationship to the deceased are uncertain. Various theories have been proposed, identifying this Ares successively as a brother, commander or fellow soldier of the deceased, as Ares, the god of war, or as the deceased himself, but all of them have been refuted. The author proposes a new interpretation of the epitaph and relief.

Onze notes égyptiennes

Gèrokomia on the Greek epitaphs from Egypt/ About few sites in the district of Panapolis/ Philogeitôn/ Supplement on the funeral data of Kom Abou Billou/ About the chronology of the epitaphs from Kom Abou Billou/ About the death of a girl/ Six fragments of texts pending/ S B I, 3944/ Lefebvre 689-690/ Sammelbuch VI, 9601, 1-7/ About a label from the Queens Valley.

La peculiaridad de los threptoí en el Asia Menor

A Greek inscription from the Roman province of Bithynia shows the children cession to a neighbouring family, in a country milieu. The kind of family and social relationships involved could explain the special frequency of Greek epitaphs mentioning threptoi, inland the Roman occidental provinces of Asia Minor. The adoption of children in a subordinate situation could be a regional option for slavery employment, seldom recorded.

A Study of the Greek Epitaphs of Rome

A Study of the Greek Epitaphs of Rome

Some Early Greek Epitaphs

In Westminster Abbey lie the bones of Ben Jonson; in the little parish church of Cookham in Berkshire lies a local squire named Arthur Babham, who died and was buried at about the same time as the poet. The world knows Ben Jonson, and his epitaph. Who has heard of his contemporary? Yet listen to the first lines of the Cookham memorial:To Cristall Skyes let Fame resounde the Vertuous Praise aright Of Arthor Babham here depicte in alabastere bright.Ten further lines record his lineage, his offspring, the expense of his monument, and his ultimate happy destination; but to the reader they mean little, compared with the directness of the words on the Abbey flagstone: ‘O rare Ben Ihonson.’There is a similar simplicity and lack of pretension in certain of the sepulchral epigrams on individuals contained in Book VII of the Greek Anthology, which marks them out among the multitude of ‘poetical exercises in the form of epitaphs’ (to quote the introduction of the Loeb edition) which form the greater part of the collection. Some of these outstanding examples are attributed, though often on very slender evidence, to famous poets from the seventh to the fifth centuries, while others are anonymous (); but, contrasted with the mass of rhetorical questions, imaginative speculations, and elaborate descriptions which so often detract from the compositions of the later writers, the epitaphs in question all have this common virtue, that the bare facts to be commemorated are stated briefly and lucidly, some-times with the transcendent clarity of great poetry, sometimes with a halting plainness which has equal power to transfix the mind.

A Greek Epitaph from Jaffa

A Greek Epitaph from Jaffa

Penalties in Lycian Epitaphs of Hellenistic and Roman Times

It is well known that a large proportion of the Greek epitaphs of Lycia contain a clause by which any person making any burial unauthorised by the founder of the tomb becomes liable to pay a named sum to some corporation, whether public (as the δῆμος, the πόλις, or the imperial treasury) or religious (as the temple of some god), or a powerful association (as the γερουσία).This liability was not (as might be supposed) a fine imposed by the state in punishment of a criminal offence. Illegal burial was indeed (at least under the Roman government) a crime at law, and was punishable by a fine; but this fine is expressly distinguished from the sum due to the πόλις and the δῆμος. The penalty in question does not, in fact, represent a fine at all, but damages to be recovered by a civil action. This explains the wide variation in the sums specified, and the otherwise unaccountable fact that the amount is fixed by the builder of the tomb. It stands for the value which he placed on the possession of the tomb, modified, probably, by his estimate of the damages which the court was likely to grant.

Greek epitaph

Greek epitaph

Greek Epitaph

Greek Epitaph Get access J. E. Sandys J. E. Sandys 1Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s4-IV, Issue 94, 16 October 1869, Page 323, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s4-IV.94.323b Published: 16 October 1869

Greek Epitaph

Greek Epitaph