DEATH IN ROMAN SYRIA

A traveler on the way to the Roman city of Berytus, modern Beirut, would pass through the cemetery just before reaching the town. Tall, built structures, elevated on bedrock outcrops, the tombs of this cemetery of the 1st and 2nd c. CE could not escape the attention of any passer-by. Inside, marble sarcophagi imported from Turkey and locally produced limestone coffins held members of the prominent families of the city. Others were buried in pits or in stacked niches inside the walled enclosures of the tombs. Gifts of jewelry, clothing, glass vessels, and coins accompanied the deceased. In this way, the people of Roman Beirut followed the funerary rituals of their forefathers, who placed great importance on the adornment of the body and the need to protect and appease the dead. The shapes of the tombs surrounding Roman Beirut, however, were hardly reminiscent of earlier types. The simple and unmarked graves of the pre-Roman burial grounds had given way to a great variety of shapes, sizes, and modes of decoration. Tombs now rose prominently along the main roads. Brightly painted decoration adorned the walls and well-executed reliefs covered the expensive coffins. Beirutis were not the only ones to revamp the architecture of funerary commemoration. Several hundred kilometers to the northeast, in the rural Syrian Limestone Plateau, inhabitants of the town of Qatura carved stylized portraits in the cliff wall, accompanied by Greek epitaphs, dedicated in the 2nd c. CE to deceased fathers, wives, and husbands. The practice of using prominent cliffs to cut out spaces for the dead had an earlier history in this region, although it was never employed on such an elaborate scale. New in the Roman period were the additions of dates, names, and faces to the grave-sites and an emphasis on individual identity and family groups. In Emesa, modern Homs, descendants perhaps of local royalty built a tomb that towered over the settlement and made use of a novel material: Roman brick work or opus reticulatum.