Description: Limestone column drum, with a stuccoed surface, later plastered over,
presumably during a reorganisation of the monument (see on M.2).
Text: Inscribed on the stuccoed surface, now damaged; some of the letters cut into the stone under the plaster.
Letters: 0.07-0.08 freehand capitals; high, widely spaced and reasonably regular.
Date: CE 284-305
Findspot:
South of Berenike:
Arae Philaenorum; reused to
form part of the west side of enclosure C; found in 1951
Original location: Unknown.
Last recorded location:
Findspot.
English translation
Translation by: Charlotte Roueché
For out Lord Diocletian, emperor
Commentary
On the site see Goodchild, op.cit., 94f.
Derived from one of four columns adapted to carry statues, apparently of the tetrarchs, and intended as frontier markers; for a parallel see D. Schlumberger, "Bornes frontières de la Palmyrène" (1939), available at Persée For other groups of four tetrarchic columns in Egypt see now Thiel, Die "Pompeius-Säule" in Alexandria (2006).
The use of Latin originally suggested that this was a monument of Tripolitania; but it is now known that Latin was common in official texts of early fourth century Ptolemais, so that there is no strong reason against associating it with the much nearer Cyrenaica.
The text was plastered over in antiquity, presumably in a post-Diocletianic reorganisation of the monument; cf on M.2.
Bibliography: Goodchild, 1952 99f and 109 ff with illustration fig 5A (drawing), whence AE 1954.184a, whence EDH 018131, Salama, 1965, 41 n.14, U. Gehn Last Statues of Antiquity 2832.
Text constituted from: Transcription (Reynolds).
Images
None available (2020).