SYRIAN CEMETERIES ARE TESTAMENT TO THE STRONG TRENDS OF convergence in funerary customs, peaking in the 2nd c. CE. Even though cemeteries in the province displayed great diversity and regional tastes, they also reveal similar attitudes to display, representation, adornment, and collectivity of burial. These burial grounds did not look the same, but the choices regarding the construction of the tombs operated on the same principles. In fact, diversity was one of these principles, as tombs were designed according to regional fashion. This chapter discusses these moments of convergence in funerary customs, as well as the return to more divergent patterns.

In order to interpret the converging trends in Syria, it is necessary to step outside the provincial boundaries. Earlier scholarship on Roman Syria often fails to do this, and instead stresses the local continuities. As discussed in the Introduction, in these narratives Rome often appears as an absent ruler, whose impact remained minimal in Syria. The material record itself may point this way. If one expected to find the brick tombs of the Via Appia or epitaphs erected in Latin by freedmen, to name two “typically Roman” customs, one would be disappointed. Yet, Syrian cemeteries did not develop in isolation from the cultural and socio-political context of the time. Rather, the moments of relatively rapid change in local ritual, as demonstrated with funerary practices throughout this book, need to be understood in the circumstances of the time. The not-so-“Roman”-looking material record, in fact, holds clues about Syrians as part of the Roman Empire. Take, for example, the popularity of funerary portraits in Roman Syria. Figural reliefs on stelae had pre-Roman forerunners, and one could explain the widespread occurrence of portraits on Roman tombs in Syria as emerging out of older practices. In other words, these reliefs were tied to local traditions. The Roman period witnessed an increased production of such stelae, as well as their expansion to new regions of the province. The problem with such reasoning is that the popularity of funerary portraits was not limited to Syria, but, instead, extended across the Roman world. Portraits represented new ways of displaying and advertising individual and group identity for many provincial communities, as well as people in Rome itself. The use of funerary portraits in Syria, despite having pre-Roman antecedents, cannot solely be considered a local phenomenon.