Description: Mosaic floor.
Text: Mosaic lettering, in pebbles of two colours. i preceded by a circle
enclosing a framed image of what seems to be an orans. To the right, ii, arranged around a monogram cross, and contained
with a wreath;
further to the right a palm-tree, and then traces of another wreath.
Letters: Not described
Date: End of fifth to seventh centuries CE
Findspot:
Gebel Akhdar: West of Cyrene:
Siret al-Jamil,
near Beida.
Original location: In the cella vinaria of a fortified agricultural villa.
Last recorded location:
Findspot.
English translation
Translation source: Reynolds-Ward-Perkins-Goodchild, 2003
Emmanuel (i.e. God with us)
Alpha and Omega
?M(ary) b(ore) Ch(rist)
Commentary
Stucchi believed that Emmanuel was the name of the owner; but Emmanuel is rare as a name in the epigraphic record of the appropriate date. Instead, it is explained as having its biblical meaning, "God with us", μεθ’ ἡμῶν ὁ θ(εό)ς in several texts: e.g. RIChrM 274, available at PHI 151678 TAM IV,1 369, available at PHI 279191, with Feissel in BullEp 1996.606. it is more usual for an inscription in this kind of position to be apotropaic and that is how it is interpreted by Catani. For a very full discussion see Catani, art.cit.
Bibliography: Catani, 1978; reported by Reynolds-Ward-Perkins-Goodchild, 2003, 413.
Text constituted from: Transcription (Reynolds).
Images
None available (2020).