Landscape of Languages

90 Pages·2012·3.16 MB·English

Landscape of Languages

The position of provincial languages in the Roman Empire
in the first three centuries AD

Thesis for obtaining the degree of Master of Arts
In the research master's programme of History: Societies and Institutions
In the specialization track of Ancient History
Under supervision of dr. F.G. Naerebout and prof. dr. L. de Ligt

M.S. Visscher, BA
s0625736
[email protected]
Schoolmeesterpad 19
2316VE Leiden

20 December 2011
ii
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements.....................................................................................................................v
Abbreviations............................................................................................................................vi
List of Maps..............................................................................................................................vii
List of Figures.........................................................................................................................viii
List of Tables.............................................................................................................................ix
Introduction................................................................................................................................1
Chapter 1..................................................................................................................................10
1.1 Languages attested in inscriptions..................................................................................10
1.2 Epigraphically unattested languages..............................................................................25
Chapter 2..................................................................................................................................29
2.1 Asia Minor......................................................................................................................29
2.2 Palestine and the Levantine coast...................................................................................33
2.3 The Eastern provinces....................................................................................................37
2.4 North African Coast (minus Egypt)...............................................................................44
2.5 Iberian peninsula............................................................................................................51
2.6 Gaul and the northern border..........................................................................................52
Chapter 3..................................................................................................................................56
3.1 Asia Minor......................................................................................................................56
3.2 Palestine and the Levantine Coast..................................................................................59
3.3 The Eastern provinces....................................................................................................61
3.4 North African Coast (minus Egypt)...............................................................................64
3.5 Iberian Peninsula............................................................................................................66
3.6 Gaul and the northern border..........................................................................................68
Conclusion................................................................................................................................72
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................75
Appendix..................................................................................................................................81

Word count (including notes and bibliography): 40.096
iii
iv
Acknowledgements

When I set out to find a topic for my thesis in September 2010, I was also planning to stay for
some months in Oxford. At that time I could not have foreseen how much my stay in Oxford
would shape and improve my thesis research. I am glad to acknowledge my deep gratitude to
Prof. Alan Bowman, director of the Centre for Study of Ancient Documents in Oxford, for
allowing me to be associated with the CSAD for five months and for discussing my thesis
with me. I also would like to thank Dr. Charles Crowther for supervising me during my stay
in Oxford. The stimulating discussions with the staff and visitors of the CSAD have enhanced
my knowledge of epigraphy and broadened my view on documents in the ancient world. My
special thanks go to Maggy Sasanow, who was always ready to help with anything and
always had time to have some coffee if needed.
Many conversations and discussions in Oxford have helped to correct some false
assumptions and create new ideas. I would like to express my thanks to Prof. Fergus Millar
and Prof. David Taylor, who were both so kind to discuss my thesis with me on several
occasions. In addition, I owe many thanks to Jonathan Kirkpatrick, PhD, who provided me
with the online version of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palestinae, without which I
could not have written on the Hebrew inscriptions. I also would like to thank Aneurin Ellis-
Evan and Simon Day for giving me the opportunity to give a talk about my thesis in the Work
in Progress seminar for Ancient history graduates.
I am very grateful to Dr. Frits Naerebout for encouraging me to go to Oxford and
giving me the opportunity to become an associate of the CSAD. His support and
encouragement have always brought me back on track. His insightful feedback and sharp
questions have greatly improved the arguments in my thesis. I have enjoyed our conversations
about the difficulties in the material and the large picture of my thesis and I have always
walked out the room with my head cleared and focussed.
Finally I would like to thank Danny Eijsermans, who has proofread my whole thesis,
was never tired of discussing ‘the meaning of an inscription in the ancient world’, and, most
importantly, has stood by my side for the entire time.

v
Abbreviations

CIE Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum
CII Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum
CIIP Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palestinae
CINP Corpus Inscriptionum Neo-Phrygiarum
CIPP Corpus des Inscriptions Paléo-Phrygiennes
CIS Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum
IG Inscriptionum Graeca
IK Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien
IPT Iscrizioni puniche della Tripolitania
IRT Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania
JIWE Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe
LA Libya Antiqua
MAMA Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua
MLH Monumenta Linguarum Hispanicarum
PAT Palmyrene Aramaic Texts
RES Repertoire d’Épigraphie Sémitique
RIG Recueil des Inscriptions Gauloises
RIL Recueil des Inscriptions Libyques
SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum
TAM Tituli Asiae Minoris
vi
List of Maps

Map 1 - Distribution of Neo-Phrygian (red) and Pisidian (yellow) inscriptions.....................11
Map 2 - Distribution of Aramaic inscriptions (white)..............................................................15
Map 3 - Distribution of Hebrew (blue) and Aramaic (white) inscriptions in Palestine and the
Levantine coast.........................................................................................................................17
Map 4 - The Phoenician-Punic world of the Western Mediterranean (from Brill’s New Pauly
– with kind permission of Brill’s publishers)...........................................................................19
Map 5 - Distribution of Neo-Punic (pink) and Libyan (green) inscriptions............................20
Map 6 - Distribution of all Lusitanian inscriptions..................................................................22
Map 7 - Distribution of Gallic inscriptions..............................................................................24
Map 8 - Languages of Italy (from Brill’s New Pauly – with kind permission of Brill’s
publishers)................................................................................................................................27
Map 9 - Distribution of Gallic inscriptions .............................................................................69
Map 10 - Distribution of Latin inscriptions found in clusters of at least 20 inscriptions.
(Woolf, Becoming Roman, 86).................................................................................................69

vii
List of Figures

Picture on title page - Libyan-Latin funerary stele (RIL 187)
Figure 1 - Pisidian funerary stele (Kadmos 26, 1987, Nr. 25).................................................12
Figure 2 - Semitic languages family tree (simplified)..............................................................13
Figure 3 - Celtic languages family tree (simplified)................................................................23
Figure 4 - Neo-Phrygian door-stone turned into a fountain.....................................................30
Figure 5 - Neo-Phrygian altar (CINP 50) ........................................................................30
Figure 6 - Ossuary of Yehosef son of Daniel with Hebrew inscription, 1 cent. BC-1 cent. AD.
(CIIP 95)...................................................................................................................................35
Figure 7 - Reconstructed Tomb of Yarhai, AD 108 (Damascus Museum)..............................42
Figure 8 - Wadi Mukatteb (CIS 2 I 775-1471).........................................................................43
Figure 9 - RIL 121: content unknown ................................................................................45
Figure 10 - RIL 162: funerary .................. ...............................................................................45
Figure 11 - RIL 140..................................................................................................................45
Figure 12 - Neo-Punic honorary inscriptions IRT 321/IPT 24.................................................50
Figure 13 - Gallic loom weight (RIG L 112) ..........................................................................54

viii
List of Tables

Table 1 - Materials used for inscriptions in provincial languages.............................................5
Table 2 - Types of content and percentages...............................................................................6
Table 3 - Aramaic inscriptions.................................................................................................15
Table 4 - Hebrew inscriptions from 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD............................17
Table 5 - Material and content in Neo-Phrygian inscriptions..................................................31
Table 6 - Form and content in Pisidian inscriptions.................................................................32
Table 7 - Form and content in Hebrew inscriptions dated to the 1st century BC until the 3rd
century AD...............................................................................................................................34
Table 8 - Size and content of Hebrew inscriptions dated to the 1st century BC until the 3rd
century AD...............................................................................................................................35
Table 9 - Aramaic inscriptions in the first three centuries AD from Palestine........................36
Table 10 - Material and content of Aramaic inscriptions dated to the first three centuries AD
..................................................................................................................................................38
Table 11 - Material and content of undated Aramaic inscriptions...........................................40
Table 12 - Content and material in Palmyrene inscriptions.....................................................41
Table 13 - Content and material in Nabataean inscriptions.....................................................42
Table 14 - Form and content of the undated Libyan inscriptions............................................45
Table 15 - Form and content of the Libyan inscriptions dated to the first three centuries AD46
Table 16 - Content and material in undated Neo-Punic inscriptions.......................................48
Table 17 - Content and material of dated Neo-Punic inscriptions...........................................49
Table 18 - Provenance and material of Neo-Punic honorary inscriptions...............................49
Table 19 - Form and content in Lusitanian inscriptions...........................................................51
Table 20 - Form and content in Gallic inscriptions dated to the first three centuries AD.......52
Table 21 - Form and content in the undated Gallic inscriptions..............................................55
Table 22 - Material and content in Greek (G) (and Latin (L)) inscriptions in Jerusalem........60
Table 23 - Survey of Latin and Lusitanian inscriptions in certain regions of the province of
Lusitania...................................................................................................................................67
Table 24 - Dated Gallic inscriptions........................................................................................70

ix
Introduction

Language is a very important part of identity of persons and peoples. Language as part of the
acculturation debate, however, has long been underexposed in ancient studies. This research is
a first step to integrate language in the overarching acculturation debate about the Roman
Empire. The study of epigraphy is an important and powerful approach to study cultural
change.1 Epigraphy forces us to ask: why do people write down a certain message in an
inscription.2 When studying inscriptions, we come as close as possible to the individual, the
choices she or he makes and the motivation for those choices. The study of epigraphy
becomes even more interesting in a multilingual environment, because the question then is not
only about what messages did people choose to write down in inscriptions and why, but it is
then also about what language was chosen to write this message? My thesis discusses the
position and the epigraphic habit of provincial languages in different parts of the Roman
Empire during the first three centuries AD. In my thesis I will answer the question: How did
the different languages, provincial and imperial, co-exist and interact with each other in the
Roman Empire in the first three centuries AD and how does this influence our image of the
Roman Empire?
By approaching the question which language people used to inscribe a grave stele, a
statue base or a pottery shard from a macro-perspective, instead of focussing upon one
specific area, city or language, this thesis will provide a unique overview of epigraphical
language use in the Roman Empire. This overview, aimed to create a broad picture
necessarily leads to some generalisation and simplification in the various regions, that might
horrify the specialists on one region or town. However, this is the unavoidable cost for the
attempt to view the epigraphy of the Roman Empire from above instead of from every
individual town or city, or every separate language. Acquiring a synthesis is impossible by
simply adding all individual studies together: one needs to start from a completely different
outlook.
The Roman Empire was a multilingual society, in which imperial languages and local
languages were used in different situations. In classical scholarship the local languages have
often been neglected in favour of the model of a bilingual Empire: Latin in the West and
Greek in the East. Under closer scrutiny the picture becomes more complex. As the editors of
the Corpus Inscriptionem Iudaeae et Palestinae, for example, state that “modern sensitivity to
the claims of social and cultural varieties – often defined by and expressed in language and
script – in one and the same country, was bound to transform our perception of Graeco-
Roman antiquity. It is evident now (and was realised imperfectly in the past in the case of
bilingual and trilingual texts) that the richness of the epigraphic tradition can be appreciated
only when conventional restrictions are removed, and epigraphic texts in different languages,
the contemporaneous expressions of different but related cultures, are studied and presented
together.”3
The days that Romanisation was only studied as civilising force issuing from Rome to
the provinces are luckily long past. Fergus Millar has written in 1966 that “the moral is
simple. The Republic, it may be, can be seen from Rome outwards. To take this standpoint for
the Empire is to lose contact with reality. Not only the pattern of the literary evidence, or the

1 J.R.W. Prag (forthcoming) “Epigraphy in the western Mediterranean: a Hellenistic phenomenon”, 1; G. Woolf
(1999) Becoming Roman, 77-78.
2 R. MacMullen (1982) “The Epigraphic Habit in the Roman Empire”, The American Journal of Philology 103,
233.
3 CIIP I, Jerusalem, v.
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