Inscribing Devotion and Death: Archaeological Evidence for Jewish Populations of North Africa (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 161)

361 Pages·2007·3.71 MB·English

by  Karen B. Stern

Inscribing Devotion and Death
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Religions in the
Graeco-Roman World
Editors
H.S. Versnel
D. Frankfurter
J. Hahn
VOLUME 161
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Inscribing Devotion and Death
Archaeological Evidence for Jewish Populations
of North Africa
By
Karen B. Stern
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2008
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISSN: 0927-7633
ISBN: 978 90 04 16370 6
Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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printed in the netherlands
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In memory of my father,
Kenneth M. Stern
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CONTENTS
Preface ........................................................................................ ix
Abbreviations ............................................................................. xvii
Chapter One
Toward a Cultural History of Jewish Populations in Roman
North Africa ............................................................................. 1
Chapter Two
Locating Jews in a North African World ................................ 51
Chapter Three
Naming Like the Neighbors: Jewish Onomastic Practices in
Roman North Africa ............................................................... 99
Chapter Four
Inscribing the Dead to Describe the Living: Reading Jewish
Identity through Funerary Language ...................................... 145
Chapter Five
Questioning “Jewishnesss” in the North African Synagogue:
Hammam Lif as a Case Study ............................................... 193
Chapter Six
North African Jewish Responses to Death: Choosing
Appropriate Gods, Neighbors, and Houses in the
Afterlife ..................................................................................... 255
Conclusion ................................................................................... 303
Bibliography ................................................................................. 315
Index ............................................................................................ 335
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PREFACE
Lamp depicting Christ (cid:2) gure upon an inverted menorah, Carthage, Tunisia
Sketch: Delattre 1895, 40
Père Delattre, long considered to be the father of archaeology in Car-
thage, includes the above sketch of a “curious lamp” in his original
publication on the Jewish catacombs of Gammarth, Tunisia (1895, 40).1
Both the shape and border decoration of the artifact are typical of
1 Attempts to interpret the artifact must rely on this unattributed sketch, because
the present location of the artifact is unknown. Its earliest attestation is in Delattre’s
publication (1895, 40), but he furnishes neither provenance nor discussion of the
artifact. Rachel Hachlili (2001, (cid:2) g. VII-4, L 7.15), Claudia Setzer (1997, 198), as well
as E.R. Goodenough (1953, 2.102; 3,957), and Marcel Simon (1962, (cid:2) gs. 3, 4) have
each interpreted copies of this image.
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