Book Description

This is the third volume of the epigraphic corpora of ancient Zoora (present-day Ghor es-Safi), a commercial city of the Roman province of Palaestina Tertia at the southeastern end of the Dead Sea in Jordan. The preceding two volumes, published in 2005 and 2008, comprised 387 Greek inscriptions left mainly by the indigenous Nabataean population of this city. As with the Greek inscriptions, the 71 Jewish Aramaic inscribed tombstones discussed in the present volume come from Zoora’s cemetery at An-Naqʽ, an extensive burial site used since the Early Bronze Age, and date from the mid-fourth to the late sixth century (AD 350/1-577/8). The corpus comprises 37 previously unpublished texts, and furnishes valuable information about the Jewish community that lived next to the Nabataean one in the city. Part I of the volume includes descriptions of the tombstones and their decoration, commentaries on the burial and chronological formulae, onomasticon and local society (supplemented by a list of personal names, their frequency, date and bibliography). The texts, subdivided into four categories, are presented in Part II.

3 maps; 15 black and white and 48 colour photographs; 36 coloured drawings.