A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. Группа авторов. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Группа авторов
Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited
Серия:
Жанр произведения: История
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781119037422
Скачать книгу
the legal position of the Jews in the eastern part of the Roman Empire Pucci Ben Zeev 1998. Hackl et al. 2003 offer useful translations of and brief comments on Josephus’s passages about the Nabataeans.

       Alberto Rigolio

      The present chapter offers an overview of the Syriac sources available for the study of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. The criterion for inclusion is, quite simply, the use of the Syriac language; the material is therefore arranged by type and is organized into “inscriptions and mosaics,” “coins,” “parchments and papyri,” “historiography,” and “other literature.”

      Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic originally spoken in Edessa (modern Urfa, in Turkey) and its surrounding region, Osrhoene, which is enclosed by the Euphrates on the West and by one of its tributaries, the Khabur, on the East. After almost two centuries of Seleucid rule, Osrhoene became independent in 133 BCE, when a dynasty of “lords” (and later “kings”) took control of it and held this region for more than three centuries until its eventual annexation to the Roman Empire (Chapter 27). It was in the context of this independent kingdom of Edessa that the local dialect of Aramaic was first put into writing, and, for this purpose, a characteristic Syriac script was developed, drawing from a late version of the Achaemenid Aramaic script. This enterprise responded to the administrative and cultural needs of the kingdom of Edessa, and it may therefore be understood as part of a broader effort to elevate non-Greek identity; the Syriac record, however, offers abundant evidence for the study of the fertile and complex interactions between Greco-Roman and Near Eastern cultures. The use of Syriac was not limited to epigraphic and documentary settings: this language was also employed in a flourishing literature that continued to be produced both within and outside Osrhoene after Osrhoene was integrated into the Roman Empire and its dynasty of rulers permanently overthrown in the middle of the third century CE. Syriac literature, which includes a particularly rich strand of historiographical writing, continued to flourish for more than a millennium, and offers rich and fascinating material for the study of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East.

      Inscriptions and Mosaics

      A considerable group of Old Syriac inscriptions are funerary in nature and mark the burial sites of members of the Edessene elites during the first three centuries CE. A representative of this material is the earliest surviving dated inscription, which was likely put up in the year 6 CE to mark the tomb of the governor of Birtha (now Birecik), a strategically placed settlement on the Euphrates (As 55). As frequently occurs in Old Syriac inscriptions, the text is reported in the first person by the dedicatee; his name was Zarbiyan and, in the inscription, he declares: “I made this tomb for myself and for Ḥalwiya, lady of my household, and for my children.” References to the family of the deceased are a common feature of Syriac funerary inscriptions, which often include portraits of the deceased together with family members, either in stone relief or in mosaic. Family ties are emphasized in these inscriptions, but especially important was any eventual connection of the deceased with members of the royal family. In the inscription of Zarbiyan, the deceased introduces himself not just as the “governor of Birtha,” but also as the “tutor of ‘Awidallat son of Ma‘nu son of Ma‘nu,” who can arguably be identified as the son of the king of Edessa Ma‘nu IV (d. 13 CE). Zarbiyan’s role of “tutor” (mrabbyōnō) is probably best understood as a special guardianship position that he had for a member of the royal family; this role may have equivalents in the Hatrene Aramaic mrabbyana, as is attested in a dedicatory inscription put up in the first half of the third century (H203:2; Vattioni 1981; Aggoula 1991; Beyer 1998), and in the Nabataean cognate rbw, used for the tutor of a third-century king Gadimat, “king of the Thanouēnoi,” in the context of a Greek bilingual inscription in which the word is translated as tropheus in Greek (RES 1097). According to Millar, this title indicates the extension of Hellenistic courtly culture into these kingdoms (Sartre 1979; Millar 1993: 431–434).

      The question of possible links with Hellenistic court life arises with another funerary inscription in mosaic, found in the northern cemetery of Edessa and part of the so-called Abgar mosaic (Am 10), which decorated the family tomb of a local notable, a certain Barsimya. This mosaic includes Barsimya’s portrait together with individual portraits of his grandfather, mother, brother, and son, but also, and most importantly, a prominent portrait of the king of Edessa, Abgar VIII (176–211), who occupies the central portion of the composition and is addressed as “my Lord and benefactor” in the inscription. Here, both iconography and text express the strong allegiance of Barsimya to the king, and there is a possibility that the Syriac terminology should be understood as a calque of the Greek euergetēs (Healey 2009: 243–245).