Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East
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This page intentionally left blank FROM HELLENISM TO ISLAM Th e 800 years between the fi rst Roman conquests and the conquest of Islam saw a rich, constantly shifting blend of languages and writing systems, legal structures, religious practices and beliefs in the Near East. While the diff erent ethnic groups and cultural forms often clashed with each other, adaptation was as much a characteristic of the region as confl ict. Th is volume, emphasising the inscriptions in many languages from the Near East, brings together mutually informative studies by scholars in diverse fi elds. Together, they reveal how the diff erent languages, peoples and cultures interacted, com- peted with, tried to ignore or were infl uenced by each other, and how their relationships evolved over time. Th e volume will be of great value to those interested in Greek and Roman history, Jewish history and Near Eastern studies. hannah m. cotton is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. robert g. hoyland is Professor of Arabic and Middle East Studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. jonathan j. price is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Tel Aviv University. david j. wasserstein is Professor of History and the Eugene Greener Jr. Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. FROM HELLENISM TO ISLAM Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East edited by HANNAH M. COTTON ROBERT G. HOYLAND JONATHAN J. PRICE DAVID J. WASSERSTEIN CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521875813 © Cambridge University Press 2009 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2009 ISBN-13 978-0-511-64135-0 eBook (NetLibrary) ISBN-13 978-0-521-87581-3 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Contents List of fi gures page viii List of tables ix List of contributors x Preface xiv List of abbreviations xxi Introduction: documentary evidence, social realities and the history of language 1 Fergus Millar i the language of power: latin in the roman near east 13 1 Th e presence, role and signifi cance of Latin in the epigraphy and culture of the Roman Near East 15 Werner Eck 2 Latin in cities of the Roman Near East 43 Benjamin Isaac ii social and legal institutions as reflected in the documentary evidence 73 3 Euergetism in Josephus and the epigraphic culture of fi rst-century Jerusalem 75 Seth Schwartz 4 Legal and social status of threptoi and related categories in narrative and documentary sources 93 Marijana Ricl v vi contents 5 Ritual performances of divine justice: the epigraphy of confession, atonement, and exaltation in Roman Asia Minor 115 Angelos Chaniotis 6 Continuity of Nabataean law in the Petra papyri: a methodological exercise 154 Hannah M. Cotton iii the epigraphic language of religion 175 7 ‘Languages’ and religion in second- to fourth-century Palestine: in search of the impact of Rome 177 Nicole Belayche 8 Th e epigraphic habit and the Jewish diasporas of Asia Minor and Syria 203 Walter Ameling 9 Religion and language in Dura-Europos 235 Ted Kaizer iv linguistic metamorphoses and continuity of cultures 255 10 On the margins of culture: the practice of transcription in the ancient world 257 Jonathan J. Price and Shlomo Naeh 11 Edessene Syriac inscriptions in late antique Syria 289 Sebastian Brock 12 Samaritan writing and writings 303 Dan Barag 13 Th e Jewish magical tradition from late antique Palestine to the Cairo Genizah 324 Gideon Bohak v greek into arabic 343 14 Th e Nabataean connection of the Benei H· ezir 345 Ernst Axel Knauf contents vii 15 Greek inscriptions in transition from the Byzantine to the early Islamic period 352 Leah Di Segni 16 Arab kings, Arab tribes and the beginnings of Arab historical memory in late Roman epigraphy 374 Robert G. Hoyland 17 Greek, Coptic and the ‘language of the Hijra’: the rise and decline of the Coptic language in late antique and medieval Egypt 401 Tonio Sebastian Richter 18 ‘What remains behind’: Hellenism and Romanitas in Christian Egypt after the Arab conquest 447 Arietta Papaconstantinou Index 467 Figures 12.1 Lamp no. 1 page 306 12.2 Lamp no. 5 – front side 308 12.3 Lamp no. 5 – back side 308 309 (א–ו Lamp no. 5 – back side, left (letters 12.4 309 (י–מ Lamp no. 5 – back side, right (letters 12.5 12.6 Capital from Emmaus 312 12.7 Th e palaeo-Hebrew and Samaritan alphabets: A. Palaeo-Hebrew, eighth to seventh centuries BCE B. Palaeo-Hebrew on coins of 66–70 CE C. Palaeo-Hebrew on coins of 132–5 CE D. Samaritan 320 viii Tables 17.1 Functional domains of minority vs. dominant languages page 402 17.2 Greek loanwords in Demotic 407 17.3 Matrix language turnover hypothesis 409 17.4 First Letter of Clement 42.4 in the Achmimic dialect of Coptic 409 17.5 Greek graffi to from the great temple of Abu Simbel 410 17.6 Words from P.Heid. inv. G 414, a Greek–Egyptian word list 411 17.7 Graffi to from Abydos 412 17.8 Stela in honour of a strategos of the Hermopolite nome 412 17.9 Chester Beatty Papyrus VII: Greek Isaiah with Egyptian glosses 413 17.10 Arabic loanwords in Coptic scientifi c manuscripts 423 17.11 Arabic loanwords in Coptic documentary texts I: technical terms 424 17.12 Arabic loanwords in Coptic documentary texts II: diverse items 425 17.13 Distribution of languages after the fall of the Tower of Babel according to Athanasius of Qûs 429 17.14 Variables of language change 433 ix Contributors walter ameling Professor of Ancient History, Institut für Alter- tumswissenschaften, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany. His publications include Karthago: Studien zu Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft (1993), and most recently, Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis II: Kleinasien (2004). dan barag Professor emeritus of Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of Catalogue of Western Asiatic Glass in the British Museum I (1985) and other studies on glass from the second millennium BCE to the early Byzantine period. Editor of Israel Numismatic Journal. nicole belayche Directeur d’études in the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sciences religieuses, Paris; author of Th e Pagan Cults in Roman Palestine (Second to Fourth Century) (2001). gideon bohak Professor at the Department of Jewish Culture and the Program in Religious Studies at Tel Aviv University. His publications include Joseph and Aseneth and the Jewish Temple in Heliopolis (1996), and Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (2008). sebastian brock Emeritus Reader in Syriac Studies, University of Oxford, and Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. Among his publications are Th e Syriac Version of the Pseudo-Nonnus Mythological Scholia (1971), and several collections of reprinted articles, including From Ephrem to Romanos: Interactions between Syriac and Greek in Late Antiq- uity (1999). angelos chaniotis Former Professor of Ancient History in Heidel- berg, Senior Research Fellow for Classical Studies at All Souls College, Oxford, and senior editor of Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. x contributors xi hannah m. cotton Professor of Classics and Ancient History, the Shalom Horowitz Chair in Classics at the Hebrew University of Jeru- salem, editor of Masada II: Th e Latin and Greek Documents (1989 with J. Geiger) and of Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek Texts from Nahal Hever, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXVII (1997 with A. Yardeni) and the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae Palaestinae. leah di segni Lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, editor of the Tabula Imperii Romani-Judaea Palaestina (1994), the Onomasticon of Iudaea, Palaestina and Arabia in the Greek and Latin Sources, and the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae Palaestinae. werner eck Professor emeritus of Ancient History, Institut for Alter- tumskunde-Alte Geschichte, Universität zu Köln, Germany. His most recent publications include Köln in römischer Zeit (2004) and Rom und Judaea (2007). Director of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum and the Prosopographia Imperii Romani at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy in Berlin, editor of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae Palaestinae. robert g. hoyland Professor of Arabic and Middle East Studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK, author of Seeing Islam as Others Saw It (1997), Arabia and the Arabs (2001) and Medieval Islamic Swords and Swordmaking (2004); he has written on the epigraphy of the late Roman and early Islamic Middle East. benjamin isaac Fred and Helen Lessing Professor of Ancient History at Tel Aviv University, author of Th e Limits of Empire: Th e Roman Army in the East (1990), Th e Near East under Roman Rule, Selected Papers (1998) and Th e Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (2004), and editor of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae Palaestinae. ted kaizer Lecturer in Roman Culture and History at Durham Univer- sity since 2005, author of Th e Religious Life of Palmyra (2002) and editor of Th e Variety of Local Religious Life in the Near East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (2008). ernst axel knauf Professor at the Institut für Bibelwissenschaft, Th e- ologische Fakultät, Universität Bern.