The CIIP, one of the most ambitious corpus projects around, has taken a major step toward completion with the publication of volume 5, which extends its geographic coverage to the Northern fringes of Galilee, the modern border between Israel and Lebanon. Despite funding issues (detailed on p. viii) and the challenge of coordinating the work of (in this volume) twenty-four contributors, the editors have managed to put in front of the reader another milestone publication: divided into two parts, with almost 2,000 inscriptions on even more pages, the fifth volume is the biggest one yet. Given the specialised nature of an epigraphic corpus, no reader will need a review to decide whether they should consult the book or not, but it is hoped that the following impressions will be of some use in highlighting its many strengths and occasional weaknesses.
As in previous volumes, sites are ordered North to South. A map showing all locations helps to visualise distances; again, as in previous volumes, its use is made slightly more difficult by the fact that the numbers it assigns to sites differ from their numbers in the corpus (e.g. Nazareth is no. CXXIII in the corpus but no. 125 on the map). The content is varied, yet to some degree predictable: given that this is Galilee, synagogue and church mosaics inevitably make frequent appearances; there is a high number of funerary inscriptions; the Roman military has left its mark on some sites; the Phoenician presence in Galilee is notable through lead weights and seal impressions. Once again, photos are provided wherever possible, and numerous re-readings of published material are offered, usually convincing. This being said, autopsy has not always been possible and is at times explicitly flagged as a desideratum (e.g., no. 6620). While many sites have yielded only one or two inscriptions, there are some significant subsets that could almost be monographs of their own: inscriptions from Elijah’s Cave fill 113 pages (no. 6435–6614), 88 pages are dedicated to pilgrims’ graffiti in the House of Petrus in Capernaum (no. 6239–6414), but even these pale in comparison to the 288 pages of funerary inscriptions from Beth Shearim (no. 6931–7229). A riveting read they are not—in all these cases and many smaller subsets, we are dealing with largely standardized material that rarely gives us more than a name and a phrase of greeting. But unless they were to write a review of the corpus for a major Classics platform, few readers will have to read the whole thing, and the care with which even this uninspiring material is subjected to scrutiny remains impressive. What is more, material such as this is now made much easier to study through another major contribution this volume makes: it is concluded by an index of personal names, itself eighty-eight pages long, that covers CIIP I–V.
The contributors have their own styles: some opt for relatively detailed exposition of minor issues, whereas others prefer a short, sometimes telegraphic style. Occasionally things are cut a bit too short—e.g., in no. 6460, “Tybout’s assumption (in SEG) is tempting but impossible”, but we are not told what impossible thing Tybout had assumed;[1] no. 6902 “is dated on the basis of pottery in the cave”, but no date is in fact given. Very occasionally the assignment of similar monuments to different contributors seems to have impeded cooperation: for no. 5973 (Kedesh), Eck rejects the ed. pr.’s Τύ[χης βωμόν] in l. 3 because “the altar was visible and therefore probably not mentioned in the text”; on turning the page, the reader encounters Heinrich’s treatment of no. 5974, which opens with βωμός (justly corrected from ΣΩΜΟΣ). The editing is good throughout, with only very occasional mishaps (e.g. duplication of text in the commentary of no. 5990). I have found hardly any mistakes in the texts (no. 6907 has ίρήνῃ for ἰρήνῃ), but in a few cases the labels do not quite keep up with the arguments developed in the commentary. No. 5908 is labeled “Greek mason’s marks (?) on an architectural element”, but the commentary makes clear that the interpretation of the text as a mason’s mark relies on discarding the (implausible) reading Γ(AIA)Ι, turning the stone around and reading Latin LI instead (but the photo shows an overstroke over I; a Greek numeral after L for ἔτους should be considered). No. 6435 is a “Greek inscription for Lucius and his wife”—but the wife actually disappears from the text as Ameling adopts SEG’s σὺμ πανοικίᾳ instead of σύμ(βιος) πανοικίᾳ. But such occasions are rare, and the overall quality is impressively consistent for a work of such magnitude.
Some well-known highlights make surprisingly brief appearances. No. 5988 from Mazzuva (not, apparently, Umm el-Amed as was long believed) records temple building activities under the Ptolemies;[2] there is no commentary to elucidate either the nature of the deity (h’lm ml’k mlkʿštrt, here rendered very literally as “the god the angel of Milkastarte”) or the identity and status of “the citizens of Hammon” (bʿl ḥmn). The Hefzibah inscription, a Seleucid royal dossier relating to the property of Ptolemy son of Thraseas, had already been republished with extensive commentary by Heinrichs and is here (no. 7561) treated much more briefly, noting (but not always engaging with) recent criticism of the re-edition.[3] While some discussion has thus been moved elsewhere, it is nevertheless worth checking even familiar inscriptions for new readings or insights, even if their treatment here cannot always be regarded as the definitive one. Thus, the inscribed sealings from Tel Kedesh receive a re-edition that changes one reading significantly: on the Sidonian sealing (no. 5967), Heinrichs discards the ed. pr.’s [ἐ]ν λιμένι in favour of reading “Phoenician numerals expressing 20, 10, and 1”, but neither a new drawing nor a proper reading of the supposedly Phoenician text are given. The objection against [ἐ]ν λιμένι (“what does this mean?”) does not consider the parallel provided by a group of Sidonians ἐν λιμένι who were active in Jamnia at the same time (CIIP III 2267 of 163 BCE; the Kedesh sealing is of 157/6 BCE); just what the Phoenician numerals would mean is also up for debate. Here and elsewhere, calculations of dates are off by one year, e.g. no. 5968, double-dated to 148 Seleucid/111 Tyrian Era: “The first year of the Seleucid era was 312 BCE, and that of Tyre […] was 275 BCE; thus, the year of the seal is 164 BCE” (p. 82)—but this seems to assume that 312 and 275 are year 0, not year 1 of their respective era. Much in our assessment of Kedesh potentially depends on the interpretation of the position ’š ʿl ’rṣ (“he who is over the land”) in no. 5971, but the succinct comment that “it probably means the mayor or something similar” is confusing rather than clarifying. Perhaps the attempt not to make an already massive publication even more unwieldy, also visible in shorter introductions to individual sites compared to CIIP IV, has led to the suppression of more detailed discussion—at any rate, readers should be aware that not all readings proposed here with confidence are beyond dispute.
Some previously unpublished texts are scattered throughout the corpus; they are not many, and not usually of great significance. Mosaic inscriptions from a church in Tiberias receive their first proper publication here (no. 6662–6665), as do some inscribed pottery sherds (potentially interesting is the Aramaic dipinto no. 6739 from Hippos, if the date in the 2nd century BCE is right—the time when Hippos became Antioch). In a fragmentary new text from Tel Dan (no. 5897), κώμης Πα[νιάτης?] is taken as an honorary comes from somewhere near Paneas, but one might at least consider that a village was named here.
Despite the ambition to be comprehensive, some texts one might expect to see are not included, usually for good reasons. The famous “Nazareth decree”, an Augustan decree on the violation of tombs (Oliver, Greek Constitutions 2), has been excluded because of its uncertain origin (p. 1355). In other cases, political disputes intervene: texts from the Golan Heights could not be incorporated, leaving no. 5898 and 5954 (jar inscriptions on “Golan ware” from Tel Anafa and Tel Dan) without their five counterparts from Kh. Zemel. That modern boundaries and conflicts prevent the joint presentation of what would have belonged together in antiquity has been noted in previous CIIP reviews,[4] but it is hard to see a way out here, and similar considerations arguably apply to IGLS. At least we now have IGLS XIV–XVI for Transjordan. More frequent, or at least more explicitly marked, are cases where the editors of the CIIP could not convince excavators to grant permission for publication, which they note with little enthusiasm (p. 427 on the “House of Petrus” in Capernaum; p. 1804 and 1807 on Scythopolis). Where preliminary information about an inscription is published, it receives an entry even if the text cannot be given (again following general CIIP practice), and in a few cases we even find attempts to get to the text by retranslating preliminary English versions into Greek (e.g. no. 7629, 7647). The attempt to be as comprehensive as possible is thus visible everywhere. Only on very rare occasions did this reviewer encounter unexplained omissions.[5]
Once again, the editors and contributors deserve our gratitude for taking upon themselves such a large project, and for seeing it to near completion in what remains, by comparison, a relatively short period of time (the eight books that constitute vols. 1–5 have been published within thirteen years). A final volume 6, incorporating inscriptions from the Negev as well as addenda and corrigenda for volumes 1–5, is in preparation after new sources of funding could be secured.[6] Thy lhwn brkth (no. 6882)!
Notes
[1] SEG 62.1617, 19 (the reference must be to Tybout’s tentative suggestion that the beginnings of l. 2 and 3 might belong to another text, a possibility that should indeed be excluded based on the photo in CIIP).
[2] For its relocation see R. Friedman and A. Ecker, “Provenance and Political Borders: A Phoenician Inscription of the Hellenistic Period ‘Strays’ Across Modern Borders”, IEJ 69 (2019): 60–2.
[3] J. Heinrichs, “Antiochos III and Ptolemy, Son of Thraseas, on Private Villages in Syria Koile around 200 BC: the Hefzibah Dossier”, ZPE 206 (2018): 272–311; I. Savalli-Lestrade, “Le dossier épigraphique d’Hefzibah (202/1–195 A.C.): chronologie, histoire, diplomatique”, REA 120 (2018): 367–83; B. Chrubasik, “The Epigraphic Dossier concerning Ptolemaios, Son of Thraseas, and the Fifth Syrian War”, ZPE 209 (2019): 115–30.
[4] Notably J. E. Taylor, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 73 (2022): 118–20 (on CIIP IV).
[5] The section on Tel Anafa includes all Greek owner’s marks on pottery, but not the Phoenician jar stamp of one Germelqart (J. Naveh, “Unpublished Phoenician Inscriptions from Palestine”, IEJ 37 [1987]: 25–30). The section on Tel Kedesh does not include the (insignificant) inscribed pottery, which may however have been published too late (B. Eckhardt, “An Inscribed Jar from Tel Kedesh”, ZPE 219 [2021]: 121–24).
[6] See W. Eck, “Zeugnisse für militärische Einheiten im Negev zwischen dem späten 1. und dem 3. Jh. n.Chr. – Vorarbeit für CIIP VI”, SCI 43 (2024): 43–53.