CHAPTER THREE

A GREEK AND ARAMAIC INSCRIPTION DISCOVERED AT ARMAZI IN

In the autumn of 1940 the Georgian archaeologist, the late I. Javakhishvili, excavated a tomb, dating from the second century A.D., in the region of Armazi,1 the ancient capital oflberia (Georgia). In the course of the excavation five inscriptions were discovered, three in Greek, one in Aramaic, and one in Greek and Aramaic. The three Greek inscriptions, which are brief and of much less interest and importance than the bilingual inscription, are as follows. 2 (r) A gem with the portrait of a man bears the inscription 'Acr- 1tixupouKtc; m-rtoc~·ric;, "Aspauroukis the pitiax." On the , pitiax, see below. (2) A gem with two portraits, one of a woman and the other of a man, bears the inscription Kixp1tixK Zi::uixx"tJc; ~o~ [i.e., ~w~] µou. On the man's , see below where it reappears under the form ZY)OUIXXY)c;. (3) A silver cup carries around its circumference the words 'Eyw

1 The ruins of Armazi are two km. northwest of Mtzkheta (Mc}Jeta) and 22 km. north of Tiflis, the present capital of Georgia. The ancient geographers (e.g., Strabo xi. 501) spelled the name 'Apµo~iK~; see also Tomaschek in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie, II, col. 1177. 2 The three short Greek inscriptions were edited in Georgian, with a summary in Russian, by S. G. Qaukhchishvili in Soobschcheniya akademii nauk gruzinskoi SSR, II (1941 ), i69-76. This publication has not been availa­ ble to me, and for knowledge of its contents I have depended on H. S. Nyberg, "Quelques inscriptions antiques decouvertes recemment en Georgie," Eranos, acta philologica suecana, XLIV (1946), 228-43, and on G. V. Tseret'eli, "Epi­ graficheskie nakhodki v Mtzheta-drevnei stolitze Gruzii," Vestnik drevnei istorii, II [XXIV] (1948), 49-57. According to Nyberg, op. cit., p. 232, Qaukhchishvili explains i1&871c; in the third Greek inscription as a Georgian name, *Dadi. It ought to be added to Nyberg's discussion that what is fundamentally the same name, i1&8ix (geni­ tive case; compare one other instance of this name in F. Preisigke, Namen­ buch [Heidelberg, 1922]), occurs in a hitherto neglected Greek inscription from the early second century of the Christian era which is now in the Museum at Temruk; see N. I. Novosadskii, "Neizdannaya nadpis Temryu­ kaskogo muzeya," Doklady akademii nauk SSR, B, 1930, pp. 224-27 (line 9 of the inscription). A GREEK AND ARAMAIC INSCRIPTION 35

~M'LAE:U~ A[IXULO~] ~OC8l)~ exixpLO'OCfLl)\I Be:paouµix 7tL"t'LOC~TI, "I, King Flavius Dades, have given [this cup] to Bersouma the pitiax." Bersouma is undoubtedly the well-known Syriac name, Bar-~auma. It has been established from various historical sources that during the first half of the first millennium of the Christian era a colony of Syrians lived in central Georgia. 1 (4) The Aramaic inscription has most recently been discussed by Altheim and Stiehl. 2 (S) The bilingual inscription, which forms the basis of this study, is a Greek and Aramaic epitaph of exceptional interest and impor­ tance. It was published in 1941 by G. V. Tseret'eli with an extensive discussion in Russian dealing with epigraphical, linguistic, and his­ torical considerations;3 in the following year, Tseret'eli republished his study in Georgian, supplying at the same time an abbreviated account in English. 4 From Tseret'eli's description and photographs of the tombstone of the following description has been compiled.

1 Cf. Harnack in Sitzungsberichte der koniglich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1901, p. 882, Anm. 5, and, more recently, N. Pigu­ levskaja's thorough study of the Syriac sources for the history of the peoples of Russia (Sirisikie istochniki po istorii narodov SSSR [Leningrad, 1941]). 2 A preliminary transcription of the first three lines of the inscription, with a tentative translation in Russian, is supplied by Tseret'eli on p. 62 of the volume described in the following footnote. The entire inscription, with a plate, is available in Franz Altheim and Ruth Stiehl, "Die Zweite (ara­ maische) lnschrift von MclJ.et'a," Forschungen und Fortschritte, xxxv (1961), 172-178; reprinted in their volume Die aramiiische Sprache unter den Achai­ meniden, I, Geschichtliche Untersuchungen (Frankfurt am Main, 1963), pp. 243- 261. 3 The volume has title pages in Russian, English, and Georgian. The first two title pages are as follows: G. V. Tsereteli, Armazskaya bilingva, dvuja­ zychnaja nadpis; naidennaja pri arkheologicheskikh raskopkakh v Mtzkheta­ Armazi (Akademija nauk gruzinskoi SSR, lnstitut istorii). : Izdatel­ stov akademii nauk gruzinskoi SSR, 1941. George Tseretheli, A Bilingual Inscription from Armazi near Mthskheta in Georgia (The Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR. The Institute of History). Tbilisi: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR, 1941. 4 Tseret'eli's study is Vol. xm of The Bulletin of the Marr Institute of Languages, History and Material Culture. Bibliographical details of the single title page are as follows: Tseret'eli, A rmazis bilingva. A Bilingual Inscription from A rmazi near M c!Jeta in Georgia, by George Tseretheli. Tiflis: Sakartvelos SSR mecnierebata Ak'ademia-The Academy of Sciences of the Georgian SSR, 1942. Georgian text, pp. 1-48, English text, pp. 49-83, 4 plates. The Georgian form of the monograph has several footnotes not pres­ ent in the Russian form.