261. Christian funerary texts from Christian cemetery
- Description:
- The tombs are associated with a structure, perhaps a cemetery chapel, which is still buried, and with the remains of a precinct wall. They are built of rubble, with a stucco surface, and all approximate to the free-standing, saddle-backed form, rising from a projecting plinth, which is still used in many of the cemeteries of Tripolitania.
- Text:
- The texts are inscribed along the lateral faces, on the gables, and in some cases on the upper surface of the plinth, and they alternate with inscribed Christian symbols
- Letters:
- See Aurigemma on individual inscriptions.
- Date:
- Findspot:
- Oea: Christian cemetery at Ain Zara (map ref. L 540580), 14 km. SSE of Tripoli on the edge of the Tripoli oasis. Discovered and recorded by Aurigemma in 1911-14. The cemetery lies on the edge of mobile sanddunes and when revisited in 1948 many of the tombs had been reburied, and others had disintegrated. Fragments of 2 only of the texts recorded by Aurigemma could be located.
- Original Location:
- Findspot
- Last recorded location:
- Findspot
- Bibliography:
- For the texts, see the detailed publication by S. Aurigemma, L'Area cemeteriale cristiana di Ain Zara (Studi di Antichità cristiana pubblicati per cura del Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana V), Rome, 1932 [Material from these texts was incorporated within the indices of the 1952 volume, but is not included here, 2009]. This edition taken from J. M. Reynolds and J. B. Ward-Perkins, The Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania, Rome: British School at Rome, 1952.
- Text constituted from:
Translation:
Commentary:
See Aurigemma for individual inscriptions.
Of the 121 tombs located and examined, 59 yielded some part of the inscriptions with which each was originally covered.
The whole complex has been ascribed by Aurigemma to the period of Vandal domination preceding the Byzantine reconquest of 531.
- Photographs:
- none.
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