al-Nabgha al-Kebira; Nabġa Complete

Description

A fairly recently explored site, registered in TIB 15 on pp. 1535–1536 as Nabġa, also spelt al-Nabgha al-Kebira. It was explored by the Syrian archaeological mission of Aleppo, supervised by Yusef Kanjo in 2007. These rescue excavations unearthed spectacular floor mosaics and foundations of a martyr shrine with a Syriac inscription dated 406/407 CE (when recorded, it was the earliest dated Christian Syriac inscription). The study and publication of inscriptions was commissioned to the members of the Syro-French mission by the Syrian General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums, in particular Françoise Briquel Chatonnet and Alain Desreumaux. Based on the contents of the inscription which mentions an archimandrite of a monastery and lower clergy, one can expect the presence of a monastery. The presence of iconoclastic damage of figural mosaics may point to the continuous occupation of the site since the Hellenistic till at least the Umayyad period. Briquel Chatonnet and Desreumaux also report the find of a coin with the name of the emperor Arcadius (378–395 CE), with a Latin legend. No finds of of other inscriptions have been reported. For a concise description of this site, see the entry by Johannes Koder in TIB 15, pp. 1535–1536. Briquel Chatonnet, Fr., Desreumaux, A., "L’inscription", in: F. Aysah (ed.), Le martyrion Saint-Jean dans la moyenne-vallée de l'Euphrate : fouilles de la direction générale des antiquités à Nabgha au NE de Jerablous (Documents d'archéologie syrienne 13, Damascus: Ministère de la Culture Direction Générale des Antiquités et des Musées, 2008), 23-28. Briquel Chatonnet, Fr., Desreumaux, A., "Oldest Syriac Christian inscription discovered in North-Syria", Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 14/1 (2011), 45-61. M. Sartre, "[Review:] Rana Sabbagh, Fayez Ayash, Janine Balty, Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet & Alain Desreumaux, Le martyrion Saint-Jean dans la moyenne vallée de l’Euphrate", Syria 87 (2010), 454–455. Paweł Nowakowski, Sergey Minov, Cult of Saints, E03538 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E03538