| Artefact ID | 1292 |
| TM ID | TM 97439 |
| Findspot (DEChriM ID) | 68 (al-Filusiyya) | Class | Funerary element, Textual |
| Material | Stone |
| Writing medium | Inscription |
| Text content | Subliterary |
| Language | Greek |
| Description | SEG XXVIII 1459; SEG XLVII 2126 descr.: Epitaph of Heron, 20 years old. Anthropomorphic stela of beach-rock. Under the head, three monogrammatic crosses [staurograms] and other symbols are engraved. Almost same consolatory formula as in the other steles sharing the same provenance – a combination restricted to the northern coast of Sinai (el-Huweinat and el-‘Arish) according to Dahari & Di Segni 2009: εὐμοίρει, εὐψύχει, οὐδεὶς ἀθάνατος, “fare thee well, be of good courage, nobody is immortal”, accompanied by the name of the deceased in vocative. Here the inscription omits εὐψύχει but adds that the boy died at the age of twenty; such a biographic element is quite exceptional in this group of steles. Exactly the same text is to be found in another stela but the tombstone is completely different; one was possibly copied on the other by an illiterate stonecutter, see SEG LIX 1878. |
| Selection criteria | Christian terms/formulas/concepts, Christian symbols/gestures/isopsephy |
| Date from | 350 |
| Date to | 499 |
| Dating criteria | Dated 5th c. in Verreth 2006 but phrasing and palaeography of the whole group of stelae point to late 4th-5th c. according to Dahari & Di Segni 2009. |
| Absolute/relative date | Relative date |
| Archaeological context | Bought on the antiquities market after the cemetery of al-Filusiyya was looted in the early 70s. According to Dahari & Di Segni 2009: 125*, an antiquities dealer from Rafiah who acted as middleman sold twenty-two tombstones to Hassan Aqilan, a Jerusalem antiquities dealer. The latter sold fifteen tombstones to Danny Pinkus, an antiquities dealer from Jaffa, who then sold eight of his tombstones to Moshe Dayan, three of which were later purchased by the Israel Museum (reg. nos. 82.2.960, 82.2.961, 82.2.962); it is unclear what became of the others. |
| Accession number | Jaffa, Private collection Pinkus D 3671 |
ARTEFACT IDENTIFIERS
Json data
