Cemetery Complete
ID: 204
Building type: tomb
Context:
cemetery; village; rural
Site:
Khirbet es-SamraʾInscriptions:
No inscriptions found, click here to add new
Description:
Most epitaphs are extremely brief—often limited to the personal name of the deceased. Within this corpus, two main groups can be distinguished. The earlier group, attributed to the third and fourth centuries CE, consists of roughly rectangular upright slabs without Christian iconography. Their inscriptions are in Greek, typically give the name in the nominative case, and often add the father’s name and/or the age. A later group differs markedly: the stones are larger, carefully finished, and ornamented with crosses that signal Christian identity. In this series, names may appear in either the nominative or the genitive, and the texts employ both Greek and CPA. These monuments are dated to the fifth and sixth centuries, with a possible continuation into the opening of the seventh, but none belong to the early Islamic period. For further discussion, see: - Humbert, J.-B., and Desreumaux, A. 1998. Fouilles de Khirbet es-Samra en Jordanie, vol. I. La voie romaine, le cimetière, les documents épigraphiques. - Nabulsi, A., and Macdonald, M. 2014. Epigraphic diversity in the cemetery at Khirbet es-Samra, Jordan. Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 149–161.