Description: Rock-cut tomb.
Text: Inscribed on the façade within a rectangular panel (w:
0.70 x h:
0.38).
Letters: Probably second century; 0.03; lunate epsilon, lunate sigma, cursive omega, and cursive mu. Traces of rubrication survive.
Date: Probably between 70 and 115 CE
Findspot:
Taucheira:
Quarry West I, South wall; found in 1963.
Original location: Findspot.
Last recorded location:
Findspot: now covered by sand.
Apparatus
1: Ἕκῑω, τεθν[η] Wright, 1963 , corr. Reynolds, ap. SEG2: π[ο]θητὸς, Ἄδω[ν]ις Wright, 1963 , corr. Reynolds, ap. SEG
4: Wright reports nothing after ΠΤΑ; but he suggests the possibility of οὐδεὶς ἀθάνατος
5: vac.. [εὐ]ψύχι Wright, 1963 , corr. Reynolds, ap. SEG
6: vac. Ὑάκιν[θ]o(ς) Wright, 1963 , corr. Reynolds, ap. SEG
German translation
Translation source: Lüderitz-Reynolds, 1983
Am sechsten Mesore starb der beklagte Adonis Hyakinthos, siebzehn Jahre, und nicht einamal einen ganzen Tag mehr; ave, lebe wohl, Kind Hyakinthos
English translation
Translation by: Editors
On the sixth of the month Mesore (30 July) died the much-loved Adonis, Hyakinthos. aged 17 years and not even a whole day (more). Ave, live well, child Hyakinthos.
Commentary
No other inscribed tombs have been uncovered in this quarry, but a number of seven branched candesticks have been reported there, of which one was seen in 1968; this should mean that it was a Jewish cemetery.
Line 2: Adonis: Perhaps in the sense of "darling", as in Anth. Pal. V. 113, 1.3, available at Perseus, but see also Robert, Hellenica VIII. 45 f. where it is stressed that the implied comparison could recall both the beauty and the early death of the subject.
Line 4: Κ perhaps for καί; it may have been the intention to state that he did not live for a whole day more than his seventeen years but the text is too obscure for certainty.
Line 5: The formula is rare in Cyrenaica but is common elsewhere and does occur in Jewish Cemeteries, eg. at Tell el Yehudieh, CIJ II, 1477.
Line 6: The cutter has avoided a fault in the stone.
Bibliography: Wright, 1963, 36, p.55,, whence, with new readings by Reynolds, SEG 20.771, PHI 324522, Robert, Bulletin Épigraphique, 1964.593; Lüderitz-Reynolds, 1983, 42.a, whence SEG 33.1475, PHI 324649.
Text constituted from: Transcription (Reynolds).
Images
Fig. 1. Face, left end (Reynolds)
Fig. 2. Face, right end (Reynolds)