A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. Группа авторов
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Antoniniana of 212 CE, attest to the intersections of Roman law and local legal traditions; but they also offer evidence of the use of Syriac and Roman proper names within legal documents in relation to each individual’s social status: perhaps unexpectedly, high-ranking individuals and public officials chose to bear Semitic names in the documents, while low-ranking officials, scribes, and private individuals from local contexts and without office opted for Roman names, ultimately revealing the complexities of cultural divisions running through Edessene society (Sommer 2018: 259–271).
P. Dura 28 is a complete Syriac document written on parchment and found in Dura-Europos, recording the sale of a female slave; it was redacted in Edessa in 243 CE (the date is given according to the Seleucid era), and it provides us with rich chronological information that has added to our knowledge of the status of Edessa under Rome in the third century (Millar 1993: 478–479). The long preamble in the text also demonstrates that Edessene civic authorities asserted peer status with Greek metropoleis and Roman coloniae; the Edessenes were organized into a citizen community that was consistent with other Greek cities and Roman colonies in Syria. The document therefore demonstrates that the use of the Syriac language cannot be merely understood as antagonistic to mainstream Roman imperial culture, but, rather, Syriac enabled the Osrhoenians to shift their allegiances within the context of a broader and complex dialogue on how Romanness was understood in a Roman provincial setting (Drijvers and Healey 1999; Andrade 2015: P1; see also Chapters 11 and 35).
Two additional Syriac documents on parchment emerged more recently from the antiquities market; they originate from Batnae in Osrhoene and date back to 240 and 242 CE respectively (P. Euphr. 19 and 20; ed. Drijvers and Healey 1999: P2 and P3). They record a transfer of debt and a lease of repossessed property respectively, and they have been used in the study of how Osrhoenians represented their sociopolitical context and interacted with it (Millar 1993: 478–479; Andrade 2015). Traces of the complexity of this relationship come from similar documents that use both Greek and Syriac languages: P. Euphr. 6 (with its duplicate P. Euphr. 7, dated to 249 CE) contains a Greek bill of sale of a slave, which, however, is accompanied by a Syriac summary and a Syriac list of witnesses and guarantors (Feissel et al. 1997). Syriac subscriptions are also found on the Greek P. Euphr. 3 (together with its duplicate P. Euphr. 4; Feissel and Gascou 1995), which also qualifies as the earliest known instance of Syriac on papyrus, written before 256 CE (see Chapter 11; Feissel and Gascou 1989; Butts 2011b).
Additional Syriac materials come rather from a village in upper Egypt, Kellis, and circulated among the Manichaean community there. Two documents, written on wooden tablets, contain Syriac–Coptic glossaries of religious and liturgical terms (T. Kell. Syr./Copt. 1) and of terms and phrases from Manichaean cosmological and eschatological texts (T. Kell. Syr./Copt. 2); they stand as evidence for the effort that went into the translation of Manichaean scriptures from Syriac into Coptic. There survive also Manichaean religious texts in Syriac on fragments of papyrus (P. Kell. Syr. 1, and possibly also P. Kell. Syr. 2), and in both Syriac and Greek on a fragment from a parchment codex (P. Kell. Syr./Gr. 1; Gardner 1996–2007). In addition, we have a mid-fourth-century Greek private letter from Kellis about a member of the Manichaean community who “has become a user of Greek and a Syriac reader”; the author of the letter, although writing in Greek, signs his name in Syriac (P. Kell. Gr. 67; Gardner 1996–2007). Other fragments of Manichaean Syriac survive on parchment (Cambridge University Library, Or. 2552–2553; British Library, Or. 6201 C (1); Berlin Papyrus Collection, P. 22364; P. Heid. Syr. 1) and on papyrus (Bodleian Library, Mss. Syr. D.13 (P) and D.14 (P)); they are all edited and translated in Pedersen and Larsen 2013. One of the most striking instances of Manichaean Syriac, however, comes from a rock-crystal stamp seal, now at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, with the inscription “Mani, the Apostle of Jesus Christ” and perhaps made for the use of Mani himself (216–276 CE) (Gulácsi 2013).
Historiography
Unlike in the cases of Palmyrene or Hatrene Aramaic, there survives in Syriac an extremely rich historiographical tradition. One of the oldest and most important texts is the already mentioned Chronicle of Edessa, a sixth-century historiographical compilation covering the period from 133 BCE to 540 CE, which is made up of more than a hundred annalistic entries, some of which are likely based on the archival records of the kingdom of Edessa (ed. and Latin translation in Guidi 1903; English translation in Cowper 1864). One of the most elaborate of these entries is a vivid narrative of a destructive flood that hit Edessa in 201 CE; the text reports the reactions and the response of the king, Abgar VIII (176–211), the noblemen associated with him, the administrative personnel of Edessa, and its surveyors and architects on the occasion of this tragic event. Among the buildings destroyed by the flood, the Chronicle mentions a “church of the Christians”: the text therefore implies the existence of a Christian church, presumably a house church of the sort known from Dura-Europos, and of a Christian community at Edessa at this time.
According to the Chronicle of Edessa, in the aftermath of the flood, districts of the city were redesigned and rebuilt, and a five-year remission of taxes was granted. Mention is made of a neighborhood of Edessa, presumably on the citadel mount, which was the location of the houses of individuals involved in the administration of the kingdom (1.9–10; for maps of Edessa, see Burkitt 1913; Drijvers 1977: 865); these individuals included surveyors and trained architects who played an advisory role to the king during the emergency caused by the flood (1.10; 2.12–13). Two new royal palaces were planned and built, and a neighborhood was erected to contain new dwellings for nobles close to the king (3.3–4; the summer palace of Abgar was later described by the pilgrim Egeria, in 384 CE, in Peregrinatio Egeriae 19.6 and 19.14–18). The close relation between King Abgar and his nobles is emphasized by the text and may recall Hellenistic court life, according to which the king’s extended family dwelt with a number of high-ranking philoi, in addition to people staying at court for a limited amount of time, such as intellectuals, politicians, or exiles, and a number of specialist assistants catering to the administrative needs of the kingdom and of the court such as clerks, scribes, and physicians (Herman 1997; Savalli-Lestrade 1998; Erskine et al. 2017); at the same time, the emphasis on kinship that emerges from the text as well as from the Syriac epigraphic material should be understood in relation to the tribal structures that were part of Edessene society (Sommer 2018: 252–258).
An account of the same flood can be found in another historiographical source, the Chronicle of Zuqnin, also known as Chronicle of Ps.-Dionysius of Tell Mahre, under the year 2232 of Abraham (ed. Chabot 1927a; see Chabot 1927b; Witakowski 1996; Harrak 1999 and 2017 for English translation). This is a universal chronicle, beginning with the creation of the world and covering the period until 775 CE, the time of its composition, and is a very rich source for the study of the Roman Near East. For instance, it describes an ancient pagan, and possibly orgiastic, cult in Edessa (Chabot 1927a: 256–257 and 259; English translation in Trombley and Watt 2000: 28 and 32 with notes; Harrak 2017). Its sources include Eusebius of Caesarea and Socrates of Constantinople, but also various Syriac texts otherwise lost, including the Ecclesiastical History by John of Ephesus (sixth century). Other historiographical sources that have been used in the study of the history of the kingdom of Edessa and the Roman Near East are the Chronography by Elia of Nisibis (eleventh century), which covers the period 25–1018 CE and brings together ecclesiastical and political events (ed. Brooks and Chabot 1910, with Latin translation; French translation in Delaporte 1910), and the monumental world chronicle by Michael the Syrian (twelfth century), which covers the period from the origin of the world to 1195 CE and relies on a range of historiographical and documentary sources that are now lost (Syriac text and French translation are in Chabot 1899).
The corpus of Syriac historiographical writing, however, is extensive and is yet to be exploited in full. Given that several Syriac sources cover the Hellenistic and Roman period, researchers in this field will find it helpful to consult the work in Debié 2015, which surveys the material and includes a comprehensive