People and Identities in Nessana by Rachel Stroumsa Department of Classics Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Kent Rigsby, Supervisor ___________________________ Lukas Van Rompay ___________________________ Joshua Sosin ___________________________ Clare Woods ___________________________ Grant Parker Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the department of Classics in the Graduate School Of Duke University 2008 ABSTRACT People and Identities in Nessana by Rachel Stroumsa Department of Classics Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Kent Rigsby, Supervisor ___________________________ Lukas Van Rompay ___________________________ Joshua Sosin ___________________________ Clare Woods ___________________________ Grant Parker An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the department of Classics in the Graduate School of Duke University 2008 Copyright by Rachel Stroumsa 2008 Abstract In this dissertation I draw on the Nessana papyri corpus and relevant comparable material (including papyri from Petra and Aphrodito and inscriptions from the region) to argue that ethnic, linguistic and imperial identities were not significant for the self- definition of the residents of Nessana in particular, and Palaestina Tertia in general, in the sixth- to the seventh- centuries AD. In contrast, this dissertation argues that economic considerations and local identities played an important role in people’s perceptions of themselves and in the delineations of different social groups. The first chapter is intended to provide a basis for further discussion by setting out the known networks of class and economics. The second chapter begins the examination of ethnicity, which is continued in the third chapter; but the second chapter concentrates on external definitions applied to the people of Nessana, and in particular on the difference between the attitude of the Byzantine Empire to the village and the attitude of the Umayyad Empire. Building on this ground, the third chapter tackles the issue of ethnicity to determine whether it was at all operative in Nessana, – that though ethnonyms were applied in various cases, these served more as markers of outsiders and were situational. Chapter four moves to the question of language use and linguistic identity, examining the linguistic divisions – the papyri. An examination of the evidence for Arabic interference within the Greek leads to the conclusion that Arabic was the vernacular, and that Greek was used both before and after the Muslim conquest for its connotations of power and imperial rule rather than as a marker of self identity. The iv conclusions reached in this chapter reprise the discussion of imperial identity and the questions of centralization first raised in chapter two. This return to previous threads continues in chapter five, which deals with the ties between Nessana and neighboring communities and local identities. The chapter concludes that the local village identity was indeed very strong and possibly the most relevant and frequently used form of self- identification. Overall, it appears that many of the categories we use in the modern world are not relevant in Nessana, and that in those cases where they are used, the usage implies something slightly different. v Table of Contents Introduction …………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter One: Elites and Identities……………………………………………35 Chapter Two: Nessana and the Empires……………………………………..86 Chapter Three: Ethnic Identities……………………………...……………..145 Chapter Four: Linguistic Identities …………………………..………….....185 Chapter Five: Local Identities …………………………………..…………..214 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………..246 Bibliography …………………………………………………………..……...251 Biography ………………………………………………………………...…...267 vi Acknowledgements Without significant help from several people, this dissertation would have been far worse. I am particularly grateful to Kent Rigsby for his patience with half-baked ideas and his careful advice. Generous readers have helped develop chapters and urged me to clarify ideas and expand my view: Josh Sosin, Grant Parker, Clare Woods, Lucas Van Rompay, Hannah Cotton, David Wasserstein, Margo Stroumsa-Uzan and Yair Wallach have all improved this study. My parents are responsible for many and varied services, not least of which were babysitting, cooking and other forms of domestic and intellectual support. For complaining far less than he wished and refusing to allow me to get away with vague notions, I am immeasurably indebted to Simon Cook. vii Introduction In their groundbreaking construction of the population pyramid in ancient Egypt, Marcel Hombert and Claire Préaux described the papyri on which they relied as consisting of matters “qui en soit, sont d’intérêt minime”. While my biased view is that the Nessana papyri are not quite as dull as the census reports to which Hombert and Préaux refer, the undeniable fact is that the source material with which this study is primarily concerned cannot be classed as a great work of literature or a riveting accounts of dramatic events. The importance of these documents lies more in the information gleaned from them than in any intrinsic pleasure they afford the reader. This information is both unique and crucial, affording us in several different ways a glance into uncharted territories and an opportunity to move beyond the standard descriptions and usual polemics of the field. Background The site of Nessana was probably first occupied as early as the third century BC, as evidenced by oil lamps and coins from the period. By the end of the second century the settlement was developed enough to support the building of a fort and a monumental staircase leading to it;1 and the material remains continue to show an increase in prosperity throughout the first century BC. There are extremely few archaeological finds, and no evidence of new construction, from AD 106 to the late fourth century AD, 1 Urman, "Nessana Excavations 1987-1995", p. 6. 1 corresponding to the annexation of the Nabataean kingdom to the Roman Empire. But by the reign of Theodosius I (AD 379 – 395), a new and substantial fort was constructed on the northern peak of the acropolis, and it is reasonable to suppose that the establishment of a military unit in Nessana dates from the same period.2 Soon afterward, the papyri begin, and it is at this point that the present dissertation commences. The evidence of the papyri gives out by the end of the eighth century, but the settlement itself appears to have continued for almost a century longer, although the evidence of new building is increasingly scarce, and the ninth century shows increased signs of secondary uses of the churches and fort. By the mid-ninth century the settlement appears to have disintegrated as a coherent unit. The history of the scholarship of the site is quickly described. A few visits in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century (including those of Musil in 1902 and Woolley and Lawrence in 1914) resulted in some descriptions and drawings of the site, particularly useful for their documentation of the grounds before the establishment of modern buildings in the first half of the twentieth century. The first serious attempt to excavate and document the site was that of the expedition led by H. D. Colt in the 1930’s. The cache of papyri at Nessana, dating from 505 to ca. 700, was uncovered by the Colt expedition in 1937, a fortuitous result of the drought which forced the American team away from their chosen site of Sobata. The results of the excavations were presented in three volumes, published serially from 1958 to 1962; the papyri finds consist of 13 literary texts and 195 documents, 96 of which were judged by Kraemer to be lengthy or 2 Ibid, pp. 14-15, contra Colt who dates the fort about half a century later. 2 important enough to warrant a full translation and commentary. The texts are, to a greater and lesser extent, fragmentary, and some are so badly damaged as to be incomprehensible. After the Colt excavations, the site of Nessana served first as a base for the Egyptian army and then as an outpost of the Israeli army; both periods of occupation resulted in damage to the site. The department of archaeology at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev undertook to excavate the site in 1987, and continued until February 1995. Unlike the Colt expedition, which focused exclusively on the upper city and especially on the remains of the churches and the Byzantine fort, the Ben Gurion excavations, directed by J. Shershevski and D. Urman, paid great attention to the residences and the finds along the slope leading to the lower town on the plain, as well as expanding the excavations on the acropolis where the Colt expedition had previously dug. Most of the results of these recent expeditions were published in 2004; unfortunately, that volume was only the first of a projected three volumes, and due to the sudden death of the two editors and excavators, the publication of the second and third volumes seems unlikely. This is doubly unfortunate, since the published articles do not include most of the inscriptions found in Nessana, Bi’rain and their environs.3 3 These Greek and early Arabic inscriptions, as well as notes and other unpublished finds from the excavations, are now housed in Beer Sheva at the Ben Gurion University; I know of no current plans to publish them. 3 The material from Nessana, with firmly dated documents beginning in AD 505 (P.Ness. 14)4 and ending in AD 689 (P.Ness. 67 and 57), falls in what has sometimes been called “the great gap” of Byzantine historiography.5 Between the well-known and well-studied age of Justinian, when the works of Procopius provide a rich primary source, and the revival of historiography with Leo the Deacon and Michael Psellos in the tenth and eleventh centuries, sources are scarce and limited in their information. Unfortunately, coverage of the early decades of Muslim rule in the Arabic sources is also problematic.