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A Recently Discovered Inscription by Arab Veterans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

W. Telfer
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Extract

The photograph here reproduced (pl. XIII) was received recently by Dr. A. Mingana from the Syrian Patriarch Ignatius Ephrem I of Antioch. His Beatitude writes that the stone, which measures 55 cm. in height and 40 cm. across, and is white, was discovered in the course of digging in the yard of the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus at Ṣadad. Ṣadad is a small town some thirty miles east of Ras Baalbek station (Beirut-Aleppo line), on the edge of the desert, almost at, but a little south of, the point nearest to Palmyra. In antiquity the longer route from Palmyra to Damascus must have passed near its site. The stone is now preserved in the baptistry on the south side of the church.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , 1935 , pp. 33 - 34
Copyright
Copyright ©W. Telfer 1935. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 I have to thank Professor J. G. C. Anderson for these and other suggestions.

2 Lebas-Waddington, 1969, 1974, 1975, 1984b, 1989, 2039, 2041, 2053, 2212, 2253b, 2286, 2287, 2291, 2346, 2539, 2546, 2699. Three more instances are provided by Dussaud, R. and Macler, F., Voyage archéologique au Ṣafa, pt. II, no. 32Google Scholar, and Missions dans la Syrie, nos. 45 and 59. And one or two more appear in other separate relations. The omission of O in οὐετρα (νοί) is odd, but may have been merely a slip of the lapidary. The word suffers various corruptions in Syria, such as οἰτρανός in Lebas-Waddington, 1974, and ὀαυτρνός in 2053, but the O seems not to be elsewhere omitted.

3 Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (1926), c. vii, n. 33Google ScholarPubMed. Lebas-Waddington, 1989, shows us veterans as local civil ἐπίσκοποι.

4 Dussaud and Macler, Voyage archéologique, pt. II, no. 104.

5 Şafaitic ‘Maḥlam’ appears in Dussaud and Macler, op. cit., pt. I, nos. 5b, 32a, 84, 113c, 397. The Ṣafaitic, Nabatean and Greek forms of the name are set out together in Répertoire d'épigraphie sémitique (Acad. des inscriptions et belles-lettres), t. I, pp. 67, 187 and t. IV, pp. 19, 40.

6 Rép. d' ép. sem. t. iv.

7 Iṣābah of ‘Asḳallāni, vol. v, pp. 187–8 (edit. Cairo).

8 Wörlerbuch der griechischen Eigennamen.