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Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/157006308X294582

Limitations of Jewish as a Labelin Roman North Africa*

Karen [email protected]

AbstractSelective attentions to normative Jewish archaeological materials and exclusionsof ambiguous or complex evidence from Jewish archaeological corpora havediverted attention from those artifacts, which might otherwise have yielded moreproductive observations about the cultural ranges of ancient Jewish populations.

Application of more critical approaches to the classification of archaeological evi-dence, contextual approaches for the analysis of archaeological materials, and thereplacement of essentialistic or syncretistic cultural models for Jews with morerealistic ones, yield vastly improved understandings of ancient Jewish archaeologi-cal materials, and, by extension, better articulated pictures of the continua between

early Jewish and Christian cultural identities.KeywordsCultural identity, identity, Jewish archaeology, Jewish art, Jewish Christian rela-tions, North Africa, syncretism, hybridity, rabbinic Judaism, essentialist, archaeol-ogy and identity, Roman North Africa, Augustine, epigraphy, indexicality

In the Roman Provinces Gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, adisplayed collection of red slip bowls exemplifies the fine craftsmanship forwhich North African pottery workers were renowned, and copied, through-out the ancient Mediterranean.1Te decoration on one of these bowls

*) I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Scholion Center for Interdisciplinary JewishStudies of the Mandel Institute at Hebrew University, whose grant facilitated my comple-tion of this article. I also would like to thank Ehud Benor and Christine Tompson fortheir valuable suggestions and feedback. Any errors therein, of course, remain my own.1)Few of these artifacts possesses secure provenance. Over the centuries, North Africansigillata lamps and bowls have accrued on the art market throughout Europe; dubious

Journal for the Study of Judaism 39 (2008) 1-31 www.brill.nl/jsj

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2 K. Stern / Journal for the Study of Judaism 39 (2008) 1-31

depicts a popular motif in fourth and fifth-century Christian art fromNorth Africa and Romethe sacrifice of Isaac.2 On the bowls surface,

Abraham is poised to sacrifice his son, Isaac: Abrahams right hand graspsa dagger, while his left hand pushes Isaacs face onto the surface of a burn-ing altar. Isaacs arms are tied behind his back. A divine hand descendsfrom above, while accompanying images of a ram and a tree foretell thestorys happier conclusion. Te broad design of the piece is typical of theneighboring bowls of comparable period and origin, which depict Orphicscenes or collections of Christian symbols in relief, arranged around theedge of a bowl in a circular formation; Abraham and Isaac, the tree, and

the ram, are fixed evenly around this bowls tondo.What is the cultural provenance of this artifact? Curators label it as

Christian, partly because of its similarity to identified Christian worksfrom North Africa. Te bowl is assumed to be one of the many objectsChristians dedicated as funerary goods, or donated as votive implementsto the basilicas and churches of Africa.3Its imagery, after all, appropriatelydemonstrates symbols and sentiments expounded by early church fathers:the grimacing visage of Abraham and the bent back of Isaac express thepathos within the biblical story, epitomize Abrahams supreme piety, andaffirm Gods ultimate salvation of Isaac. But are curators entirely justifiedin their classification of the bowl as Christian, in the absence of a clear and

documented find- context for it? Jews, after all, as well as Christians,emphasized the importance of this biblical story in late antiquity.4Is therea chance that such an artifact, could have been commissioned, owned, ordedicated, by a Jew?5

methods of objects sales and acquisitions have rendered impossible the exact identificationof works origins. Tough many of these bowls probably originated in North Africa,such pieces were frequently traded throughout the region and were so esteemed that theirstyles were emulated by artisans elsewhere. For related discussion, see David J. Mattinglyand R. Bruce Hitchner, Roman Africa: An Archaeological Review, JRS 85 (1995):165-213 (201).2) Te bowl is shallow, measures approximately 23 cm in diameter and is composed of finereddish clay. Its appearance and size resemble those of similar bowls on display.3) Similar objects are identified as grave goods within Christian North African tombs,though this genre of artifact was frequently exported throughout the Mediterranean; seeMattingly and Hitchner, Roman Africa, 198, 201; J.M. Hayes, Late Roman Pottery(Lon-don: British School of Rome, 1972); and idem,A Supplement to Late Roman Pottery(Lon-don: British School of Rome, 1980).4)Rachel Hachlili,Ancient Art and Archaeology in the Diaspora(Leiden: Brill, 1998), 246.5) Prejudices based on both foreign analogy and rabbinic prohibition of images have shapedscholars expectations about what a Jewish artifact shouldlook like and have informed the


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K. Stern / Journal for the Study of Judaism 39 (2008) 1-31 3

Figure 1. African red slipware bowl depicting the sacrifice of Isaac (Bos-ton 1989.690) 2007, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

typologies of such artifacts. Tese assumptions and the labels they generate bear distinct

consequences; analysis of archaeological materials conforms to such classifications and ulti-mately reinforces previous assumptions about North African Roman, Christian, and Jewishartifacts and the cultural practices of those who produced them. Extensive discussions ofthe problems associated with identifying Jewish artifacts within Ross Kraemer, Jewishuna or Christian Fish: Identifying Religious Affiliation in Epigraphic Sources, HR84(1991): 141-62. Criteria for determining Jewishness of inscriptions is reviewed withinPieter W. van der Horst,Ancient Jewish Epitaphs: An Introductory Survey of a Millennium ofJewish Funerary Epigraphy (300 BCE-700 CE)(Kampen: Pharos, 1991).


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According to the criteria of art historians, it is nearly impossible to tell. Inlate ancient literary exegesis and visual art, both Jewish and Christiangroups emphasized the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac.6 Yet historians ofChristian art generally indicate that, until a later period, Christian Sacrificeof Isaac scenes rarely depict Isaac as already on top of the altarusuallythe image of a burning altar occupies a separate space in the design. In thisBoston image, Isaac is positioned directly on top of the altar. Tis distinctfeature of the artifact accords with art historians guidelines for Jewish ver-sions of the image in earlier periods, although its dating to the fourth orfifth century renders its cultural classification indeterminate.7Creators of

this bowl could have provided a definitive symbol such as a cross, a ChiRho, or a menorah, to demonstrate an authoritative cultural context forthe object. Tis provision, however, was deemed neither necessary nordesirable.8o the modern eye, therefore, the bowl appears to be culturallyambiguous. Tis apparent cultural ambiguity, furthermore, is more com-mon than art historians and taxonomists might like: it manifests itself inmany other genres of North African third, fourth, and fifth-century art.Countless objectssuch as funerary tiles, bowls, and lamps, which depictbiblical scenes and figures, such as Jonah, Adam and Evefill modernmuseums in unisia and Algeria.9Tese artifacts, too, exhibit distinctly

6) Hachlili, Ancient Art, 244; Robin Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art(London:Routledge, 2000), 72.7)Cf. Hachlili,Ancient Art, 239-46, figs. V-3, V-5, V-6.8) Te possible reasons for this are manifold. Perhaps, the context of an inscription or arti-fact may have rendered it redundant to provide a clearer marker of cultural differentiation,or the creator of the object wished for it to be purchasable to a broader group of people.

Alternatively, a person who commissioned or designed such a bowl may not have felt itnecessary to make such symbolic distinctions. After all, articulations of individual or groupidentity might not have been so important within certain North African contexts.9) Certain funerary tiles in the Hadrumentum region depicted the face of Christ, butfigurative iconography derived from Christian scriptures is surprisingly rare in AfricanChristian art. For a survey, see Paul Gauckler, Catalogue du Muse Alaoui(Paris: ErnestLeroux, 1928). During these periods throughout the Mediterranean, Christian art fre-

quently favored motifs from Hebrew Scriptures in both votive and funerary contexts, onsarcophagi, terracotta funerary tiles, and in mosaic. In North Africa, scenes of Jonah, Dan-iel, Adam and Eve, and the sacrifice of Isaac were most commonly depicted, as detailed in

Jensen, Understanding Christian Art, 25. Jensen usefully discusses the complex relationshipsthat develop between popular pagan and Christian genres of art: Compare, for exam-ple, the fishing scenes and sea life depicted on North African mosaics of the third, fourthand fifth centuries C.E. with the fourth-century mosaic floor at Aquileia, demonstrating


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indeterminate qualities; rarely do words or symbols explicitly mark theimages as either Christian or Jewish.10

Methodology, Identity, and the Interpretation of ArchaeologicalEvidence for Jewish Culture of Roman North Africa of the Second toSixth Centuries C.E.

Upon closer inspection, many apparently Christian, or, Jewish arti-facts, like the Boston bowl, similarly resist the classifications previously

assigned to them, and, once reevaluated, prompt different lines of generalinquiry and analysis.11For example, should we presume, until proven oth-erwise, that ancient works of figurative biblical art that possess no explic-itly Jewish markers should necessarily be labeled as Christian?12Canwords used in an epitaph simultaneously emulate Christian and Jewishnotions about an afterlife? Must a symbol be either a menorah or a cross,or can it be both? Regnant theory about Jewish life in Roman North Africasuffers terminally from failure to ask questions such as these. A brief surveyof selected North African artifacts demonstrates the need for a differentapproach to Jewish and Christian materials from antiquity, which, unlikeconventional methods, can account for greater complexities within North

African archaeology and culture.

how the Christian Jonah cycle generally belongs to this category of maritime art. Christianiconography, apparently, made use of these popular motifs and adapted them to its ownuses, imbuing them with a somewhat different meaning (ibid., 48).10) When un-provenanced artifacts, such as this Boston bowl, bear figurative images, histo-rians conventionally label them as Christian. After all, scholars continue to assume that

Jews abhor figurative representation on artifacts, despite vast and increasing bodies of evi-dence and scholarship that demonstrate an opposite tendency. See Steven Fine, Art andJudaism in the Greco-Roman World. oward a New Jewish Archaeology(Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 2005), 47ff. Tis objects lack of a definitive cultural marker isworth evaluating in its own regard.11) Many of these designations are based on curatorial decisions, which are rarely explainedin publication.12) Scholars tend to avoid labeling ambiguous figurative art as Jewish, partly due to pro-scriptions within the Hebrew Bible and within rabbinic texts, and partly as the result ofskepticism about categories and possibilities of Jewish art, see Fine, Art and Judaism,1-10. Fine draws particular attention to a passage in the Palestinian almud (y. Abod. Zar.3:3 42d), as preserved in a Geniza fragment, which describes an exceptionally neutral atti-tude toward the use of images in synagogues and elsewhere (ibid., 98); Fine favors thetreatment of J.N. Epstein, Additional Fragments of the Jerushalmi, arbiz3 (1931): 20.


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Previous studies have applied foreign rabbinic and local Christian liter-ary categories to organize and evaluate African Jewish materials. I respondto the shortcomings of these approaches by advocating a distinct methodof analysis, that: emphasizes local archaeological comparanda for the cat-egorization and analysis of Jewish archaeological materials; depends uponrealistic and articulated models of culture and identity for the examinationof artifacts; and, draws attention to Jewish artifacts complexities andregional variability. Te resulting analysis resists definitional limitationsand responds to the realities of life and culture in a world where peopledidnt travel much: Jewish residents of third-century Carthage might have

frequently reflected upon their relationship to Jews elsewhere, but theynecessarily interacted with each other, and their non-Jewish Carthaginianneighbors more frequently than they did with Jews from elsewhere. Tearchaeological record requires commensurate evaluation.

o this point, scholarship has rarely addressed Jewish culture of RomanNorth Africathe partial state of evidence for African Jews has obscuredthe potential for research. Te polemical writings and laws of contempora-neous Christian authors provide the only local literary evidence for North

African Jews, while most Jewish archaeological and epigraphical evidenceappears so limited and obscure, that few scholars have attempted to edit oranalyze it.13Te unruliness of the archaeological materials, combined with

13) Late Roman legal texts also mention Jews specifically in North African contexts. Teselaws are equally Christian and polemical: they criticize Jewish behaviors and identify themwith enemy, non-Orthodox Christians, such as Donatists, heretics, and Arians. It is asdifficult to extricate the historicity of these representations of Jews, as it is from thepolemical writings of Christian authors. For related discussion, see my forthcoming treat-ment, and Amnon Linder, Te Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation(Detroit: Wayne StateUniversity Press, 1987), no. 63; and also Linder, La loi romaine et les juifs de lAfrique duNord, inJuifs et judasme en Afrique du Nord dans lantiquit et le Haut Moyen Age. Actes duColloque International du Centre de Recherches et dtudes Juives et Hbraques et du group derecherches sur lafrique antique 26-27 Septembre 1983 (ed. C. Iancu and J.-M. Lassre;Montpellier: Universit Paul Valry, 1985), 57-64. Yann Le Bohec has produced an editedcollection of North African Jewish inscriptions and an onomasticon which draws from

African epigraphic and foreign rabbinic sources, in Inscriptions juives et judasantes delAfrique romaine, Antiquits Africaines 17 (1981): 165-207, 208-26. Few others haveendeavored historical analysis. Exceptions include: H.Z. Hirschberg,A History of the Jewsin North Africa(rev. ed; 2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1974-1981), vol. I; and Claudia Setzer, Jews,

Judaizers and Judaizing Christians in North Africa in Putting Body and Soul ogether(ed.Virginia Wiles, Alexandra Brown, and Graydon Snyder; Valley Forge, Pa.: rinity PressInternational, 1997), 185-200.


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scholars dependence on local Christian and foreign rabbinic literary textsfor their interpretation, has ultimately yielded such wildly ranging discus-sions of the topic that some scholars have concluded that progress in thestudy of North African Jews remains improbable.14

One solution to this apparent problem relates lessto the search for newinformation, but, rather, moreto the application of a different method tothe same archaeological materialsone that is sensitive to the problems ofprevious studies. In other words, improved understandings of Jewish life inNorth Africa and elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean require reformedmethods of classification and archaeological inquiry. Selective attentions to

normative Jewish materials and exclusions of ambiguous or complexevidence from Jewish archaeological corpora have diverted attention fromthose artifacts, which might otherwise have yielded more productive obser-vations about the cultural ranges of ancient Jewish populations.15 Animproved approach must endeavor to more nuanced understandings ofthe state of the evidence itself and must liberate that evidence from partial,historical, rabbinic, Christian and legal paradigms that presently, implic-itly, and falsely, govern its analysis.16

14) .D. Barnes discussion of this matter in ertullian: A Historical and Literary Study(NewYork: Clarendon, 1971) differs partly from the position taken by Claude Aziza, ertullien

et les Juifs(Paris: Belles Lettres, 1977). Barnes questions the plausibility of reconstructing ahistory of North African Jews in the second through fifth centuries, contra W.H.C. Frend,A Note on Jews and Christians in Tird-Century North Africa,JS21 (1970): 92-96.15) Pieter van der Horst aptly identifies the methodological problems endemic to the studyof Jewish artifacts: It may be clear by now that the matter is far from being simple. A rigor-ous application of criteria would require us to regard an epitaph only as Jewish when anumber of criteria reinforce one another, e.g., Jewish burial place plus Jewish symbols andepithets . . . Such a methodological strictness runs the risk of excluding valuable material the

Jewishness of which is not manifest enough. On the other hand, methodological slacknessruns the risk of including non-Jewish material that may blur the picture. It is better, for thesake of clarity, to keep on the strict side, without being extremely rigorous. Tat is to say,application of two or three criteria together is to be much preferred above applying onlyone, the more so since in late antiquity Judaism, Christianity, and paganism were notalways mutually exclusive categories (Ancient Jewish Epitaphs, 18). A different view of

interpreting inscriptions and archaeology is espoused in Martin Goodman, Jews and Juda-ism in the Mediterranean Diaspora in the Late-Roman Period: Te Limitations of Evi-dence,Journal of Mediterranean Studies4 (1994): 208-24.16) Possibilities that ancient Jewish identities might defy rabbinic or Christian literarydescription have been discussed by Daniel Boyarin in Border Lines: Te Partition of Judaeo-Christianity(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Scholars also continueto challenge the dependability of Christian authors descriptions of contemporaneous


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Histories of ancient Jewish communities in the diaspora are, at best,challenging to reconstruct. In the absence of literary evidence, scholarsnecessarily depend upon extant archaeological and epigraphic materials tocompile hypothetical histories of non-rabbinic Jewish populations.17Suchendeavors, however, bear their own complications; methods employed toidentify Jewish materials, and the frameworks designated for their inter-pretation, entirely shape the outcome of scholarly analysis. Many havedebated, therefore, the most appropriate methods to qualify materials as

Jewish: some advocate more stringent means to identify objects as Jewish,whereby multiple markers are required to satisfy responsible Jewish

designations. Others have argued that these materials are so obscure thatthey are difficult, or, impossible, to interpret at all.18Different conceptionsof identity and means of artifact interpretation, however, yield distinctpossibilities about considerations of Jewish materials and about theirresponsible use to approach understandings of otherwise unattested ancient

Jewish populations.Archaeological analysis ideally responds to the imagined conditions in

which artifacts were produced, used, or deposited. Dominant emphases onartifacts exhibitions of pan-Mediterranean Jewish features continue toobfuscate analyses of evidence for ancient diaspora Jews. Intensified exam-ination of the precise historical and cultural contingencies of individual

Jewish populations. See Andrew Jacobs, Te Remains of the Jews: Te Holy Land and Chris-tian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004); Judith Lieu,Image and Reality: Te Jews in the World of Christians in the Second Century(Edinburgh:& Clark, 1992); Jack Lightstone, Christian Anti-Judaism and its Judaic Mirror: Te

Judaic Context of Early Christianity Revised, inAnti-Judaism in Early Christianity. Vol. 2:Separation and Polemic(ed. Stephen J. Wilson; Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier Univer-sity Press, 1986): 103-32; Paula Fredriksen, What Parting of the Ways? Jews and Gentilesin the Ancient Mediterranean City, in Te Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians inLate Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages(ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed;bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 3-17. Most of these studies question the historicity ofChristian literary representations of both Jews and Christians. Te analysis of Jewish mate-rials requires commensurate reevaluation, though few have incorporated these more com-

plex perspectives on literature into the interpretation of archaeological evidence.17) See Paul rebilco,Jewish Communities in Asia Minor(Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1992); Shimon Applebaum, Jews and Greeks in Ancient Cyrene (Leiden: Brill,1979); Leonard V. Rutgers, Te Jews of Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interactionin the Roman Diaspora(Leiden: Brill, 1995).18)For a thorough evaluation of the former position, see Van der Horst, Ancient JewishEpitaphs, 16-18, and for the latter, see Goodman, Jews and Judaism.


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Jewish populations and altered approaches to ancient identity, yield morecomprehensive and nuanced examinations of the artifacts ancient Jewishpopulations produced.

Ethnographic comparanda from modern Jewish populations in unisiaillustrate the need to more carefully reconsider evidence for ancient, as wellas modern, Jewish populations in the region. Jewish populations in unisand Djerba are only seven hours apart by automobile.19unisian and Djer-ban Jews, however, recount different community origins, speak differentlanguages, and share distinct relationships with their neighbors.20 Most

Jews of unis speak French to each other, emulate European ideals and

dress, and live in urban apartments in the center of town.21Tey live andwork with Muslim unisians. In contrast, Djerban Jews communicate in

Judeo-Arabic, dress idiosyncratically, dwell in walled houses like theirMuslim neighbors, but live outside of the town center in the traditionalHara.22Some men work in town, while women remain largely in theHara. Jewish domestic and devotional spaces in both unis and Djerbacontain comparable ritual objects that bear similar Jewish symbols. ofocus on the similarities between these to derive broader cultural under-standings of these populations would clearly be misleadingthis approachwould yield distorted understandings of both unisian and Djerban Jewishcommunities. An improved method would attend to the differences, as

well as the similarities, between the material cultures of the groups: itwould recognize how communities expressions of appropriate Jewishnessin their domestic and devotional spaces differ according to their family

19)While the Jewish populations in unis and Djerba have significantly dwindled since1967, they still retain these characteristics. Tese descriptions are also informed by myexperience and travels in unisia in the summer and autumn of 2003.20) Djerban Jews particularly maintain an oral tradition that their community dates to theexile of the Israelites after the Babylonian destruction of the Jerusalem emple in 586B.C.E. See Andr Chouraqui, Histoire des Juifs en Afrique du Nord(Jerusalem: Hachette,1985), 52.21) French citizenship was uniformly granted to unisian Jews in 1910this was a decisionthat produced extensive cultural ramifications. See discussion in Hirschberg, A History of

the Jews, 2:134-35. Te Jewish community in unis appears to have retained the strongestties to Jewish communities in Paris; in times of greatest difficulty, the unis Alliance Isra-lite appealed directly to the Alliance Isralite Universelle of Paris. See Norman Stillman, TeJews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society,1979), 411-12.22) Details how of Djerban Jews traditionally exhibited idiosyncratic approaches to dressand aversions to integrating with Muslim neighbors in Chouraqui, Histoire des Juifs, 159.


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traditions, local cultures and contexts. Perceptions of distinct origins,immigration patterns, socio-economic status, languages spoken, and rela-tionships with neighbors, in addition to local cultural experience, informthese differences. Evaluations of objects from these Jewish communitiesrequire equal attention to differences and consistencies in their demonstra-tions of Jewish practices and behaviors.

Ancient populations require comparable consideration. Jewish groupsin North Africa did not necessarily share uniform cultural experiences;during hundreds of years of Roman and Christian rule, various Jews, likeothers, migrated to North Africa from all regions of the Mediterranean

and under diverse socio-economic conditions.23Roman slave-ships mighthave carried some Jews from Syria to sell in ports along the Mauretaniancoast. Other Jews might have traveled voluntarily from Rome to Africanport cities, such as Carthage, or Mogador, to conduct trade. Te socio-economic status of the individual immigrants (whether slave, or not), thesocio-economic potential of the immigrants family (whether slave, recentlyfreed, or of higher status), and the length of time an individual or hisdescendants remained in Africa, are all factors that necessarily shaped thefeatures of local Jewish life. Te languages spoken and learned (Greek,Latin, or local dialects), the names conferred to children, and the conventionsof devotional and funerary activities, all relate to the origins and aspira-

tions of the individual and the customs of the places she most emulated.North African Jews operated within very different cultural environ-ments than Jews in Rome, Asia Minor, or elsewhere in the Mediterranean;

African Jews mostly wrote in Latin, not Greek, and shared distinct rela-tionships with indigenous, Neo-Punic, Roman African, and Christianneighbors.24No more should scholars presume a unified paradigm of anal-

23) J.-M. Lassres work remains the most comprehensive study of the settlement patternsof Roman, indigenous, and allogenic groups in North Africa. See Lassre, Ubique Populus:Peuplement et mouvements de population dans lAfrique romaine de la chute de Carthage lafin de la dynastie des Svres (146 a.C.-235 p.C.)(Paris: ditions du Centre National de laRecherche Scientifique, 1977).24) Tis region stretched westward from central Libya to the Atlantic Ocean. Distinct his-tories of colonialism and conquest in this particular region enforced its political, cultural,and religious differences from the rest of the Roman Mediterranean. See discussion in Mat-tingly and Hitchner, Roman Africa; Brian Warmington, Carthage(2d ed.; London: Hale,1969); J.B. Rives, Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage from Augustus to Constantine(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); David Mattingly, ripolitania(London: Batsford, 1995);Peter Brown, Christianity and Local Culture in Late Roman Africa,JRS58 (1968): 85-95.


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ysis for the artifacts these Jewish populations produced than they ought forobjects produced by Djerban, unisian, and Parisian Jews in modernity. Ireconsider the material record according to these assessments.25

Distinct understandings of culture facilitate this different evaluation ofancient Jewish materials. First, I resist concepts of syncretism, andassimilation, whose application falsely dichotomizes culture;26these rein-force artificial notions about the intrinsic separate-ness of cultures and theartifacts they produce.27I consider as an advantage, rather, a description ofculture as vague, expansive, indivisible and inclusive.28Here: cultureis a

25) Te post-Saussurian semiotic approach is useful in the examination of artifacts as matri-ces of multiple and simultaneous cultural markers, signs, or, indices. Indexicality enablesthe labeling of these components. For discussion, see Alec McHoul, Semiotic Investigations:owards an Effective Semiotics(Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1996). It is possible, there-fore, to use artifacts to explore concordant and conflicting expressions of identity, withoutpresuming the perceptions of human agency that underlie modern theories of human inter-action; post-modern theory, which underlies the development of this vocabulary, presumesunderstandings of human agency and reality, which are anachronistic for the review ofancient societies. I use the semiotic vocabulary here as an analytical tool, but not as theultimate means of artifacts interpretation.26) o be certain, culture, like religion, is a non-descriptive and imposed category, whichis rarely defined and, as such, has become exceedingly unpopular among theorists of reli-gion and anthropology, see Nicholas Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture(Michigan: Uni-

versity of Michigan Press, 1992). As omoko Masuzawa critically argues, the term cultureis dangerously capacious, semantically vague and confused, and, finally, taken as a whole,inconsistent, in Masuzawa, Culture, in Critical erms for Religious Studies(ed. Mark C.aylor; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 71. Te history of the words use is avaried and problematic one and couched in the emergence of specific and historical ideologies,cf. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society 1780-1950(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958).27) Assimilation and syncretism models ultimately depend upon notions that culturesmay be pristine, distinct, and easily divisible. Assimilation assumes that members of onepristine culture A, can become (voluntarily or subconsciously), more like a pristine cultureB. Syncretism frequently describes the end-result of this process as a merged AB cul-ture. Neither of these options is particularly helpful in the evaluation of complex societies,whose cultural components are frequently indivisible. Please see discussion within PeterVan Dommelen, Colonial Constructs: Colonialism and Archaeology in the Mediterra-nean, World Archaeology28 (1997): 31-49. At a certain level, furthermore, all cultures are

assimilated and syncretized in this waytherein the use of these adjectives is essentiallymeaningless.28) As Ann Swidler notes, Culture influences action not by providing the ultimate valuestoward which action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire, or a tool kit, of habits, skills,and types from which people construct strategies of action. Here, I replace Swidlersaction, with practice. See discussion in Ann Swidler, Culture in Action: Symbols andStrategies,American Sociological Review51 (1986): 273-86 (273).


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concept that permits the situation and interpretation of artifacts within aframework of ancient uses and understandings. Just as culture can serve asan integral unity through which individuals relate and acquire understand-ings that ultimately establish their personal habits and outlook, so too canmaterial culture. Culture, then, serves as an interactive framework throughwhich to compare material manifestations of North African Jewish, Chris-tian, Roman and Neo-Punic practices. It is the permission of culturalfluidity and un-boundedness that encourages improved archaeologicalanalysis.

Different understandings of identity also facilitate this more nuanced

examination of artifacts. Te possibility remains that on the same day inHippo in the fourth century, one woman might identify herself as Jewwhile entering a synagogue, as a Roman of the provinces when participat-ing in Roman legal litigation, and as a Punic-speaker in the marketplace.

As Teodore Schatzki describes, methods of identification can be varied,simultaneous, and alternate.29Semiotic vocabularies furnish useful meansto label precisely how objects can simultaneously signify, or, index, thesedivergent cultural ideals.30Attention to various cultural indices, in addi-tion to traditional Jewish ones, permits a more careful evaluation of Jewishartifacts and draws attention to their complex relationships with other

Jewish and local African populations.

Specific related steps assist this interpretation of the material evidencefor North African Jewish populations. A first stage reevaluates previouscriteria for the classifications of artifactsoverwrought taxonomies haveerroneously included and excluded evidence from Jewish corpora. Schol-ars traditional methods of determining whether an object is appropriatelylabeled Christian or Jewish, frequently relate to embedded assump-tions about the rigidity and exclusivity of religious symbols and corre-sponding beliefs.31 Distinct presumptions about what ought to beconsidered Jewish or Christian have shaped inconsistent interpretations of

29) Teodore R. Schatzki, Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity

and the Social(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 7.30) McHoul, Semiotic Investigations, 92.31)Frequently these assumptions remain unarticulated. An excellent discussion of thesedifficulties is provided in Jan Willem van Henten and Alice J. Bij de Vaate, Jewish or Non-

Jewish? Some Remarks on the Identification of Jewish Inscriptions from Asia Minor,BO53 (1996): 16-28, and Jan Willem van Henten and Luuk Huitink, Inscriptions fromIsrael: Jewish or non-Jewish Revisited, Bulletin of Judaeo-Greek Studies32 (2003): 37-46.


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North African culture. Application of more critical approaches to theclassification of archaeological evidence, contextual approaches for theanalysis of archaeological materials, and the replacement of essentialistic orsyncretistic cultural models for Jews and Christians with more realisticones, yield vastly improved understandings of these ancient Jewish materi-als, and, by extension, better articulated pictures of the continua betweenlocal African, Jewish, and Christian cultures.32

Studies of ancient Jewish populations continue to question what is aJew in antiquity, while scholarship of Jewish archaeology and epigraphychallenges material evidence with correlative questions,33such as is it [an

object] Jewish? and how does it mark itself as such?34 Such historicaland archaeological queries inevitably reinforce scholars emphases on fea-tures of artifacts that appear to be most Jewish to them; they generallyignore or disqualify artifacts multiple features that ambiguously index

Jewish populations, or index multiple cultural references equally andsimultaneously. Inevitably, scholars emphases of artifacts Jewish fea-tures, skew the objects ultimate analysis.

In this study, different sets of questions that eschew rigid systems ofclassification permit attention to greater ranges of acceptable Jewish prac-tice and representation. Tey replace the question: is it [the object] Jewish?with questions that invite more open-ended responses. Tese include:

32) Works of Paula Fredriksen emphasize this range within Christian literary sources, i.e.,What Parting of the Ways? Also see Paula Fredriksen and Oded Irshai in Christianityand Judaism in Late Antiquity: Polemics and Policies from the Second to Seventh Centu-ries, in Te Late Roman-Rabbinic Period (ed. Steven . Katz; Te Cambridge History ofJudaism, vol. 4; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 977-1035. Te reconsid-eration of a range of Jewish and Christian materials removes the limitations imposed byscholars definitions of Jewish and Christian artifacts. Such corrections permit thereconsideration of some objects, such as the Boston bowl, as possibly Jewish. Tis proce-dure raises additional possibilities about ranges of North African Jewish funerary or votivepractices and prompts additional questions about Jewish and Christian visual representa-tion in antiquity.33) Te additional recycling of queries about whether or not an artifact might be Jewish,ultimately adds little to improved understandings of the artifacts and the cultures thatproduced them. Tis is why different, and more productive questions are required. Seediscussion in Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E.(Princ-eton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 276-77.34) See treatments in Kraemer, Jewish una, and Van der Horst,Ancient Jewish Epitaphs,respectively.


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What is the rangeof cultural elements exemplified in an artifact? Where, if at all, do noticeably Jewish elements appear on an arti-

fact? How do indices of Jewishness manifest themselves? How is Jewishness circumscribed bythis artifact, if at all?

Tese reformed questions endeavor artifacts more comprehensive exami-nation and permit possibilities of local manifestations of Jewish practice toreplace anticipated paradigms for pan-Mediterranean Jewish representa-tion.35Brief reevaluations of selected artifacts, which scholars convention-

ally overlook, demonstrate the need to challenge imposed limitations onNorth African Jewish corpora. When categorized and questioned differently,these artifacts raise new possibilities for interpretation of Jewish culture in

Africa and the broader Mediterranean.

Avoiding a Monolithic Jewishness: Countering Illusions ofIdentifiability and Normalcy in Jewish Archaeology

In memory of the son/daughter of Abedo. He/she lived 7 years. Peace tohim/her;Bardo Museum, unisiaPhoto: Author

One epitaph, stored within the archives of the Bardo Museum in unis,both exemplifies the limitations of exclusively emphasizing an artifactsJewish aspects, and also demonstrates the advantages of a reformedapproach (Figure 2). Over 100 years ago, French soldiers discovered thisepitaph when they accidentally exposed an ancient necropolis in Tina,

35) Tese paradigms are developed by scholars in response to definitions provided withinrabbinic and Christian texts (in the absence of local Jewish texts) about what a Jew is. Forextensive discussion, see Shaye Cohen, Te Beginnings of Jewishness(Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1998). Both rabbinic and Christian texts possess operative polemical goalsin their representations. See Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making ofChristianity(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 26.


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outside the modern unisian city of Sfax.37Te inscription is bilingual,with orthographic irregularities in its Latin and Hebrew scripts. It reads:Memoria / Abdeunis / Bicsit anos / VII ,38in memory of the36) Gauckler, Catalogue, 103, no. 1257; R. Cagnat, A. Merlin, and L. Chatelain, Inscrip-tions latines dAfrique (ripolitaine, unisie et Maroc) (Vol. II; Paris: Leroux, 1923), no. 36;E. Diehl, Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres (Berolini apud Weidmanns, 1967),no. 4960; Le Bohec, Inscriptions juives et judasantes, no. 7; Zeneb Ben Abdallah, Cata-logue des inscriptions latines paennes du Muse du Bardo(Rome: cole Franaise de Rome,1986), no. 158.37) Te French soldiers had been digging the earth outside Sfax for a military installationwhen they uncovered a necropolis and this text beneath. Te area is presently cut off fromSfax by a series of highways in a small nature preserve. Te excavations of early Romanmaterials from the region are also documented, cf. M. Barrier and M. Benson, Fouilles Tina, BCH(1908): 22-63.38) For regionally idiosyncratic representations of Roman numerals in Africa and elsewhere,see, Numerorum Formae Notabiliores, in CIL8, suppl. 5.3, 306.

Figure 2.Epitaph reads:Memoria|Abedeunis| Bicsit anos| VII 36


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son/daughter of Abedo. He/she lived 7 years. Peace be to him/her.39NorthAfrican Roman numerals indicate the age of the deceased (7), and twomenorot border the bottom of the inscription.40

39) ranslations of the text and determinations of the gender of the deceased vary accordingto scholars transcriptions and interpretations of the last Hebrew word in the inscription.Le Bohec translates the Hebrew text as la paix (soit) sur elle (?), in Inscriptions juives et

judasantes, no. 7; while Diehl translates the text as pax illi, ILCV, no. 4960; Cagnattranslates the Hebrew as pax ei in ILAfr, no. 36; while Ben Abdallah interprets the text tocommemorate a male and translates the Hebrew text to read Paix sur lui in Catalogue,

no. 158. For readings of a , rather than a following the in the Hebrew text, see thetransliteration in Le Bohec, SLM LH in Inscriptions juives et judasantes, no. 7; andthe transcription of Ben Abdallah in Catalogue, no. 158, VI. , which may includeadditional typesetting errors in the Hebrew.40) Tis inscription remains in the archives of the Bardo Museum in unis and its photo ispreserved in Ben Abdallah, Catalogue, no. 158. Irregularities of the steles preservation andthe inscriptions orthography obscure certain aspects of its interpretation. Te stone dis-plays at least three major inconsistencies of orthography within the renderings of (1) Abe-deunis, (2) vixit, and (3) the Hebrew text. Te root of the name, ABD, or servant of, isa common Punic and Neo-Punic onomastic root and varied spellings of the name are foundthroughout North Africa, as discussed in Zeneb Ben Abdallah and Leila Ladjimi Seba, Indexonomastique des inscriptions latines de la unisie(Paris: ditions du Centre National de laRecherche Scientifique, 1983), 23, 23. Also common is the addition of a Greek genitive

suffix to the names Semitic root, e.g.,Abedonis(e.g., CIL8:10475.4; = 22646.6). Bixit,too, follows common local patterns of the replacement of a V with a B in inscriptions.Te last matter of the letter following the in the Hebrew text, however, presents a greaterobstacle for interpreting the gender of the deceased. Reading the letter as which followsthe yields a feminine personal suffix that would suggest a female gender for the deceased.K. Jongeling, North-African Names from Latin Sources(Leiden: Research School CNWS,1994), 3, thinks it is highly improbable that the name contains the masculine name ele-ment bd, since a female is indicated; therefore he suggests it might be a form of habetdeus.Ben Abdallah makes a similar suggestion and states that Une contamination avec le nomunique Habet deum(souvent citAbeddeum), frquent dans les contextes chrtiens ds ledbut du IVesicle, nest pas impossible, Catalogue, no. 158. While Jongelings and Ben

Abdallahs readings respond to the possibilities of alternative renderings of similarly vocal-ized names, I would argue against the necessity of differently reading the names root toaccount for the female gender of the deceased indicated by the Hebrew suffix. Renderings

of Hebrew in most North African inscriptions remain exceedingly limited and there is littlereason to believe that North African Jews actually understood or easily manipulated classi-cal Hebrew grammar. Repeated renderings of Shalom on inscriptions, for example, mayindicate that North African Jewish populations may have copied this limited Hebrew senti-ment from a static paradigm. As neither Latin nor Hebrew orthography is consistent in theregion, furthermore, there might be little correspondence between the suffix used in theHebrew text and the actual gender of the deceased indicated by the Punic root of the name.


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Scholars have, traditionally, drawn attention to only two of the textsmost obvious features: its depiction of two menorot and its use of Hebrew.41Tese attributes have led scholars to classify it as one of a group of textswith clear and unambiguous displays of Jewishness. Unlike some otherartifacts, this inscription employs overtly Jewish markers; both Yann LeBohec and Zeinab Ben Abdallah label the epitaph, accordingly, as of ajuif.42Le Bohec assumes that these Jewish epigraphic features necessarilycorrespond to normative Jewish cultural practice of the commemora-tor.43 o this point, the classification of the stone as Jewish has beenconsidered sufficient to describe it, so that complicating traits, such as its

conflation of diverse scripts, names, numerals, and languages, remain sup-pressed. Could attention to these additional aspects of the epigraphic field,however, contribute to a more meaningful analysis of the stone than previ-ous perspectives have provided? Why ought the discussion of the inscrip-tions cultural context relate only to its use of Hebrew letters and carvedmenorot?

An artifacts most apparent features can sometimes be its most decep-tive. Artistic symbols, such as menorot, inscriptions of Hebrew letters,and allocation of Biblical names, are all considered to be immediatelyidentifiable markers of Jewishnesspar excellence.44Scholars frequently con-sider artifacts that contain such markings to be, in some way, undoubtedly

Jewish, but those without them, impossibly so. Such a process of identifica-tion and analysis, initially, might appear logicaland obviousto non-specialists. An unforeseen effect of this facile identifiability of Jewishelements, however, can ultimately obscure other non-Jewish aspects.Many artifacts, in addition to explicit markings of menorot, biblical names,

For this reason, I suggest that epigraphic evidence for the gender of the deceased remainsinconclusive. In all cases, the matter of the gender of the deceased does not impact thebroader argument at hand.41) See examples in Le Bohec, Inscriptions juives et judasantes, 174 and A. Merlin,Notes, BCH(1919), cciv-ccv.42) Le Bohec, Inscriptions juives et judasantes, no. 7, Ben Abdallah, Catalogue des Inscrip-

tions, no. 158. Of course, this epitaph could mark the tomb of a female or male child. Asdiscussed in notes 39 and 30 above, the orthographic irregularities of the inscriptionobscure the gender of the deceased.43) Le Bohec, Inscriptions juives et judasantes, 168; also Fine,Art and Judaism, 36.44) Ross Kraemer, Jewish una; Van der Horst,Ancient Jewish Epitaphs; Rachel Hachlili,Te Menorah, the Ancient Seven-Armed Candelabrum: Origin, Form, and Significance(Leiden: Brill, 2003).


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or declarations of Iudeus, simultaneously bear additional types of cul-tural indices. Why should other, non-Jewish symbols on an artifact beignored in its assessment?

A closer, but different examination of the epitaph reveals its simultane-ous inclusion of a more complex set of cultural markers than traditionalanalyses of it have permitted. First, it demonstrates a practice most popularwithin early Christian epitaphs in North Africait records the Latinfunerary formula, memoria, in a Latin script.45Second, the name of thedeceased conflates two distinct naming systems: Abedo is a conventionalname for North African males of Punic descent, while this name, Abedeu-

nis, demonstrates a method of recording filiation that is typical of Greekonomastics throughout the Mediterranean.46Te bottom portion of thetext uses a Semitic script to record a Hebrew phrase, , or peaceto him/her.47Finally, two menorot, definitively Jewish symbols, are incisedat the bottom of the inscription.

It is of critical importance to explore each of these linguistic and sym-bolic idiosyncrasies. Just as menorot might signify Jewishness, so too,may other formulae indicate concurrent cultural identifications.48 Te

45) Memoria, became a popular marker for a martyrs tomb in North Africa, particularly

in the late third and early fourth centuries. See discussion in J.B. Ward-Perkins, Memoria,Martyrs omb and Martyrs Church,Akten des VII Internationalen Kongresses fr Christli-che Archologie I(1965), 3-25, and W.H.C. Frend, Te North African Cult of the Mar-tyrs,JbAC9 (1982): 154-67.46) Tis name utilizes a Greek genitive form, in the Latin, to express that the deceased isactually the son of Abedo. Other Neo-Punic instances of this name occur in the nomina-tive; an Abedo is commorated on a stele which Delattre attributes to the Punic poque,in A. Delattre, Gamart ou la ncropole juive de Carthage(Lyon: Mougin-Rusand, 1895), 5-6.47) Te funerary formula (inclusion of age at death) remains conventional for Latin epi-taphs throughout North Africa. See e.g., Ben Abdallah, Catalogue, nos. 155-157.48) Attention to language and script patterns in Jewish epitaphs ultimately contributes tomore precise understandings of Jewish identity within North Africa. Te function ofcommemorative texts, after all, is not only limited to the act of recording the name of thedeceased, or the placement of symbols on an epitaph. For related discussion, see John

Bodel, Epigraphic Evidence: Ancient History from Inscriptions(London: Routledge, 2000), 2.Te phrases, epithets, languages, and scripts employed on an epitaph also serve as deliberateand public displays of the status, patriline, education, and values of that individual. Trougheach of these aspects, commemorative language can serve as an encoded systemthe sub-tlest of its rearrangements, variations, and inflections may deliberately convey specific cul-tural information. For such tendencies in speech, consult treatment in Daniel Fishman,Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 152-53.


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general appearance and features of the artifact strongly resemble othersdiscovered in the same region of ancient Tina.49 Te majority of theinscription is in Latinthe most common epigraphic language of theregion. Te desirability of the common Christian incipit, memoria, andthe modification of a Punic name (Abedo) with its Greek patronymic form(Abdeunis), place the epitaph squarely within the commemorative pat-terns of normative indigenous, and North African groups, variously ofPunic descent or cultural context, which inhabited an increasingly Chris-tian African world.50Te epitaphs synthesis of all of these features pointsto the commemorators embrace of, and embeddedness in, a complex cul-

tic, linguistic, and onomastic environment in Africa Proconsularis. Whyshould its Jewish features be foregrounded at the expense of local, conven-tional features?

By attending to an inscriptions most Jewish features, scholars doanswer the implicit question, is the artifact really Jewish? But theseapproaches also perpetuate false assumptions about Jewish cultural unifor-mity in antiquity, and tell us far too little about the particular cultural situ-ation of an individual artifact and its creator. Abdeunis epitaph exemplifiesthe distortion imposed by scholars classification of an object as Jewishand emphasis on its Jewish traits alone. Such traditional approaches onlypermit scholars to say that Abdeunis commemorator used symbols to

identify the deceased with other Jewish groups from North Africa andelsewhere in the Mediterranean. Tis tells us nothing about his culturalsituationwhy he favored specific names for his progeny, the languages heactually spoke, his values, or whether he was an immigrant or a long-termresident of this African region.

What are the ramifications of the more contextual examination sug-gested here? A contrasting and richer picture emerges when we begin tonotice other features of the artifact. First, the commemorator named his/her child just as other North Africans, presumably of Neo-Punic descent,also named their children. Te commemorator found it acceptable, atleast, and desirable, at best, to use the esteemed vocabulary of Christianmartyrdom (memoria) to commemorate his child. Te majority of the

inscription is in Latinunusual for Jews in the Mediterranean, but entirely

49)Tis region now borders the modern unisian city of Sfax. For comparable regionalinscriptions, see R. Cagnat, A. Merlin, and L. Chatelain, Inscriptions latines dAfrique (rip-olitaine, unisie et Maroc) (Vol. II; Paris: Leroux, 1923), no. 35, 37.50) See note 39 above and Ben Abdallah and Seba, Index onomastique, 23, 33.


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prevalent among most North Africans of the western provinces. TeRoman numerals that mark the age of the child at death are rendered intypically North African ways.51 Te general appearance of the stone islocally conventional. When the commemorator incises distinctly Jewishsymbols on the epitaph, he marks the Jewish identity of a child who wasnamed, spoke, and began to grow up, in a thoroughly integrated North

African world.Does this artifact demonstrate what many are wont to call assimila-

tion? Why would notsuch a designation suffice to describe the epitaph,which demonstrates Jewish/non-Jewish merging? Assimilation, and its

companion, syncretism, remain popular terms to describe artifacts andpractices that exhibit both Jewish and non-Jewish features.52Such vocabu-lary, however, implicitly depends on problematic and artificial culturalmodels and forces polarities, dichotomies, and divisions on cultures whoseidentifying features are not mutually exclusive. In that schema, Jewish andnon-Jewish cultures are considered opposites: syncretistic, or assimi-lated, objects/cultures are those that fall somewhere in between the Jewishand the non-Jewish. Tis epitaph, however, demonstrates the limitationsof these assimilation/syncretism modelsafter all, they impose artificialdivisions on complex matrices of ancient culture. Assessments of this arti-fact as that of an assimilated Jew, in North Africa, are as misleading and

limited, as they are non-descriptive and imprecise. Tis preferred approach,rather, examines exactly how the artifact employs tools of a local environ-ment to express an idiosyncratic local manifestation of Jewish culture; itdoes not assume that it merges the traits of a finite culture A with a finiteculture B, because North African culture was too multifaceted and com-plex to be simplified in this way.

51) Discussion in Bodel, Epigraphic Evidence, 1-56.52) Tis model posits that a pure indigenous population slowly adopts the practices, lan-guages, customs, etc., of an entirely new group, to increasingly resemble it. Te assimilationmodel relates to these understandings, and describes the flow of one cultural entity intoanother, cf. Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries

(New Haven: Yale, 1997), 148. Te concept of syncretism similarly describes the possibilitythat two pristine cultural components can be simply combined. Approaches by Romanistssuch as Greg Woolf and Peter Van Dommelen raise useful arguments that religion, likeculture, is fundamentally indivisible and cannot be cut into clear and distinct componentsto be syncretized. See extensive discussions in Greg Woolf, Beyond Romans and Natives,World Archaeology28 (1997): 339-50; and Peter Van Dommelen, Colonial Constructs:Colonialism and Archaeology in the Mediterranean, World Archaeology28 (1997): 31-49.


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Contingencies of preservation prevent any knowledge about the actuallife of the commemorator of this epitaph, or the deceased it commemo-rates. Spaces certainly exist even between the act of inscribing the stone,the life and culture of the commemorator and the commemorated.53Tisdistinct approach, however, regardless of all necessary limitations, facili-tates a vastly improved understanding of the cultural context of the indi-viduals involved.54A careful unpacking and analysis of all linguistic andsymbolic patterns within Jewish texts, not just the presence of Hebrew orbiblical quotations, offers an opportunity for a more nuanced understand-ing of how North African Jews chose to describe the identities of the

deceased within their local environments and conceptual frameworks.

Acknowledging Multiple Normalcies in Jewish Culture

Te Boston bowl and the Abdeunis epitaph exemplify the limitationsimposed by common methods of Jewish artifact classification. Anothergenre of artifact, however, demonstrates why rigid and exclusive definitionsof Jewish and Christian artifacts further confound archaeological anal-ysis; conventional archaeological categories that impose ranges of nor-malcy for Jewish and Christian symbolizations and artifacts cannotaccommodate more realistic and complex cultural models. Only with

respect to scholarly categories are such hybrid African artifacts abnor-mal: roughly 20% of Jewish epitaphs from North Africa concurrentlybear explicit cult markers of pagan, and Christian identification andpractice.55 While scholars have traditionally treated as abnormal or

53) It is to be presumed that in most cases, commemorators were not inscribing tombstonesthemselves. No matter how rough-hewn the epitaph, a specialist would probably have beencalled upon to complete the stone. For such reasons, there cannot be a one-to-one correla-tion between the languages and representations on the tombstone and those used on a dailybasis by the person who commissioned the stone. One can minimally assume, however,that the person who commissioned an epitaph would only use that epitaph if it were mini-mally acceptable to him or her.54) See analysis of Bodel, Epigraphic Evidence, 5-6.55) Cult here designates those elements that specifically relate to deity, or worship ofdeity. All inscriptions combine diverse cultural indices. I emphasize one category of themhere, but not to the absolute exclusion of its other features. I use terms of cult, rather thanreligion, for greater precision: the epitaph and the symbols on it simultaneously serveother functions as well. See related discussion in J.Z. Smith, Imagining Religion(Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1982).


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interstitial those artifacts that overtly and simultaneously display multi-ple religious symbols, these tendencies are relatively conventional in North

African Jewish art.56

One manifestation of these concurrent symbols is that of a mergedJewish and Christian symbolthat of a menorah and a cross. Te cata-combs of Gammarth, 17 km north of unisthe most concentratedsource of Jewish funerary archaeology in North Africaprovide oneexample of this design (Figure 3).57Te epitaph initially appears to exem-plify the iconography and epigraphy of the most conventional Jewishfunerary commemoration: the marble surface is carved with two menorot,

a shofar, ethrog, and an inscription of shalom in Hebrew.58races of redpaint still remain in the incisions on the stone. Upon closer examination,however, one notices that an additional symbolthat of a crossprovidesthe structure for each of the epitaphs menorot.59

One might consider this Gammarth configuration of a menorah and across as accidental, if it were entirely uncommon in North Africa. But thismerged symbol appears in third-fourth-century funerary epigraphy fromallregions of North Africa. One funerary graffito from a catacomb in rip-olitania contains a similar image; Romanelli describes it as a menorah withnine straight branches and a straight horizontal base, which is bisected bya cross-like superstructure (il graffito con candelabro e crisma stilizzato su

un tumulo deposto al pede (Figure 4).60

56) Tese are artifacts that most frequently earn participial, or, hyphenated classifications,such as judasant in Le Bohec, Inscriptions juives et judasantes; Judaizing-Pagan, orChristianizing-Jewish, cf. Setzer, Jews, Judaizers, 185-200.57) While some epitaphs from the catacombs consist of names of the deceased painted ontoterracotta tile, other epitaphs from the region include Jewish symbols and Hebrew lettersincised on marble plaques.58) Rachel Hachlili,Jewish Funerary Customs, Practices, and Rites in the Second emple Period(Leiden: Brill, 2005), 138-40.59) It includes two menorot with curved tripod bases, a palm, shofar, and ethrog, and isinscribed with the Hebrew text for Shalom.60) Photographs and drawings reproduced in P. Romanelli, Una piccola catacomba giudaicadi ripoli, Quad. Arch. Lib.9 (1977): 111-18; 112, fig. 3. Te shape of the image resem-

bles the menorah from Kissera (CIL8:750a-d), but not the one from Gammarth. wooutward-leaning palms also flank the image. Tis graffito was discovered in the proximityof multiple other depictions of menorot, which do not exhibit internal crosses. Unfortu-nately, these cannot be reviewed in situthe early drawings provide the best documenta-tion for the tombit was bombed in World War II (118). Other artifacts, such as lamps,depict similar images, e.g., Yann Le Bohec. Les sources archologiques du judasme afric-ain sous lEmpire romain, in J.-M. Lassre, Juifs et judasme en Afrique du Nord, 13-64.


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Figure 3. Marble funerary stele incised and painted with crossed menorotand inscription, Gammarth catacombs; Carthage Museum, unisiaPhoto: Author

Figure 4. Menorah graffito and its placement on wall of catacomb in Oea;ripoli, LibyaSketch: Romanelli 1977, 112, fig. 3


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Another artifact from the ancient town of Chusira (Kissera) in Algeria,bears a symbol of an equilateral cross; four diagonal branches extendupward from its center, and an omega and an alpha occupy opposite lowersectors of its quadrant (Figure 6);61the resulting image depicts a menorahprotruding from a cross.62In a comparable manner, this image explicitlycombines a symbolic representation for Christ with that of menorah.63

Some might argue that such symbols are not synthetic because theChristian component of the sign might be anachronisticthat theseChristian symbols were not yet used as Christian markers by contempora-neous and local populations. Within each area where the merged sym-

bols have been discovered, however, the equilateral and Latin cross, inaddition to that of the Chi Rho, were used as distinct Christian symbolsduring the same periods (Figure 6).64Te cross portion of these images,therefore, represents an identity symbol that local Christian populationsused concurrently.

Most scholars analyses of such combined symbols have been brief orapologetic because the Christianizing of the menorah is discomfiting tosome. Hachlili asserts that only Christian groups, which would have appro-

61) Reproduction of sketch from CIL8:705d.62)

Te elaboration of a cross symbol is common among Christian artifacts of the fourththrough sixth centuries: crosses are occasionally extended into forms resembling the symbolof the Neo-Punic anit, or letters are attached to the tip of each cross in extended forma-tions (e.g., Liliane Ennabli, Catalogue des inscriptions chrtiennes sur pierre du Muse duBardo[unis: INP, 2000], no. 36). Byzantine lead seals from Carthage frequently presentother symbols or letters extending from the structure of a cross. See P. Icard, Notes,BCH1917; and Notes, BCH1919. In such cases, the images conventionally associ-ated with one cultic sphere appear to modify expressions of the other. Tis image of themenorah cross serves as an additional example of this trend.63) Tis stone consists of four pieces, three of which are inscribed with Latin text and script(CIL8:705a-d). CIL8:705a = CIL8:23781, cf. IL584. Tis particular figure (705d) hasnot been reexamined in CIL. Tis image was reproduced in Goodenoughs treatment ofdiaspora Symbols, but was overlooked in subsequent analyses of Jewish materials; E.R.Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (New York: Pantheon, 1953-

1968), vol. 2. Te stone was discovered embedded in Algerian fortifications, which post-dated the Arab conquest, but the stone was subsequently lost.64) In Proconsularis, see examples from Kissera, e.g., CIL8:705d; in ripolitania, see illus-trations of S. Aurigemma, Larea cemeteriale cristiana di in Zra(Rome: Pontificio Istitutodi Archeologia Cristiana, 1932), tombs 54, 56; Aurigemma notes the frequency of theappearance of the Latin cross within the iconography at in Zra in the ripolitanian des-ert, ibid., 195, 238-39.


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priated Jewish imagery, would have produced such imperfect representa-tions of the menorah.65 Similarly, Simon considers such images to be

Figure 5. Drawing of shattered entablature engraved with cross/menorahsymbol, Kissera, AlgeriaSketch:CIL8:705d; reproduced with permission of the Berlin-Brandenburgische

Akademie der Wissenschaften

65) Hachlili, Menorah, 202. Tis vague use of appropriation is problematic because itsummarily eliminates the possibility that those who considered themselves to be true Jewscould have been unproblematically incorporating Christian imagery or ideas. As such, thevariations in the symbols depiction demonstrate an important point about the use of themenorah itself in North Africa. Te symbol may have been viewed as malleable, or ableto be tailored to the interests of those who engrave it.

Figure 6.Sketch of Latin crosses present within burial complex at inZra in LibyaSketch: Aurigemma 1932, tab. 7; reproduced with permission of thePontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana


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Christian representations of their belief in the two stages of revelation.66LeBohec identifies the symbols as Jewish, but, when he evaluates a similarimage on a North African lamp, he declares the impossibility of this com-bination of a menorah and a cross: Cette religion [Judaism] honore unDieu unique: la croix que lon a pens voir sur les lampes la menorahdeNundinus, pourrait bien ntre que le av, la dernire lettre de lalphabethbreu, symbole qui, prcisment, dsigne Dieu.67Yet, in each of thesecases, the cross formation at the center of the menorah cannot simply beexcused as an accident, a Hebrew letter, or the sign of a misplaced Chris-tian artifact.68Tese artifacts, rather, represent clear, positive, and concur-

rent identifications with Jewish and Christian theology, and exhibit themwithin distinctly Jewish contexts. Tey mark the burial spaces of Jews,who simultaneously embraced Jewish and Christian prescriptions for thedivine.

Tese commemorative images pose problems for contemporary schol-ars, but there is no indication that they did for the ancients who usedthem. At the very least, they indicate that those Jews who rendered theseimages were not disturbed by Christian groups contemporaneous use ofthese symbols. Tey may not have been sensitive to the cross integrationinto the structure of the menorah, or to variations in the menorah itself.69

66) Marcel Simon, Le chandelier sept branchessymbole chrtien? in Recherchesdhistoire Judo-Chrtienne(ed. Marcel Simon; Paris: Mouton & Co., 1962).67) Le Bohec, Les sources archologiques, 20.68) Tis explanation of the symbol as a av is problematic at the most basic of levelsthere is no evidence that Proconsular Jews even knew what a Hebrew av was. Toughvarious epitaphs include the Hebrew word Shalom, they do not provide any indicationthat the word was anything but a symbol. See Hayim Lapin, Palestinian Inscriptions and

Jewish Ethnicity in Late Antiquity, in Galilee Trough the Centuries: Confluence of Cultures(ed. Eric Meyers; Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 239-67. Aside from onemore extensive epitaph in Hebrew from Mauretania ingitania (Le Bohec, Inscriptions

juives et judasantes, no. 82), no evidence exists that Jews in North Africa composedinscriptions in Hebrew.69) Te appearance of the non-seven branched menorot in non-burial contexts is confus-

ing for similar reasons. It is unclear whether these designs may have been produced by/forgroups other than the populations identified with more certainty in burial contexts. Isit possible that either pagans or Christians might have adopted the image as a symbol,rather than as a representation of a sort of practice or ideology? A cluster of menorahimages from Oea, in ripolitania, depicts the varying possibilities of representations of thenumber of branches of menorot. In one burial complex, some menorot are depicted withseven-branches, while others might have nine or twelve, as in Romanelli, Una piccola


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At most, combinations of the menorah and cross indicate the degree towhich some people saw it as possible, appropriate and desirable to identifysimultaneously with the multiple gods and practices that the two imagesindependently symbolize.70

Scholars consider the menorah to be a clearly recognized symbol ofJewish identity.71Yet the creative and explicit modification of this sign withanother one implies a more complex type of indexicality and, perhaps, anindication of a more complex type of divine supplication in response to abeloveds death.72o these deceased, perhaps Jewish and Christian godswere contiguous, identical, or multiple. o their commemorators, their

catacomba, 112, fig. 3. Certain scholars, such as Rachel Hachlili, directly correlate devia-tions in menorah design (from the seven-branched tripod base form) with a differingunderlying ideology; Hachlili,Menorah, 200-201. She also suggests that they, alternatively,may have been mistakes or produced by less than perfect workmanship (ibid., 202).Tese ripolitanian images do not necessarily suggest such conclusions. It is unclear whetherdistinct numbers of branches of a menorah might indicate distinct ideologies, practices, orsimply an emulation of a distinct design.70) Te combination of the image of the menorah with that of a cross has been recognizedelsewhere in the Mediterranean. In her examination of the origin, form and significance ofthe menorah, Rachel Hachlili has noted patterns of representing crosses within menorot inRoman Palestine in Hachlili, Menorah, 270-72. Hachlili has stated that some of these

images are not of menorot at all, but of the tree of life. Tis interpretation would discountthe possibility of their simultaneously serving as menorot and crosses. She describes thatmost of the attested instances of such combinations derive from sites identified as Chris-tian, ibid., 272, although the criteria for identifying these sites as Christian are unclear. ZviMaoz takes similar positions toward menorot in Christian sites, Comments on Jewish andChristian Communities in Byzantine Palestine, PEQ 117 (1985): 63. Other chancelscreens within churches in the Palestinian region pair distinct images of the menorah withthose of the cross. One architectural fragment from fourth to fifth-century Sicily, in thetown of Catania, pairs the images of an encircled cross next to that of a five-armed meno-rah, cf., N. Bucaria, Sicilia Judaica(Palermo: Flaccovio, 1996), 54, fig. 5; Hachlili,Meno-rah, 274, fig. D6.16). Specific North African Jewish epitaphs, such as this, have beenviewed with comparable discomfort by the scholars who have studied them.71) See discussion in Hachlili,Menorah, 280.72)Whether the image resembled a normative menorah with seven curved branches, a

Neo-Punic-like representation, or one combined with a cross, it signified a range of accept-able and possible practices to commemorate the deceased. It symbolizes allegiance with aset of ideals or ideas (perhaps, even, ethnicity), but in no case does it represent the sameideals or ideas in any given instance. Just as the form of the image may be mutable, so toomay the identities that the image symbolizes and the deities to whom it refers. Tough themenorah is the Jewish symbolpar excellence, cf. Hachlili,Menorah, 177, the meaning ofpar excellence changes according different persons, places and times.


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simultaneous supplication was both appropriate and desirable. As themenorah and cross markers indicate, ancient conceptions of deity/deitieswere more complex and fluid than modern taxonomies of Jewish mono-theism permit.73While some Jews may have viewed a simple menorah asthe only appropriate symbol to adorn an epitaph, others disagreed. Attimes of burial, other African Jews engraved commemorative symbols ontotheir epitaphs that evoked the theological, funerary, and burial practices ofcontemporary Neo-Punic, Roman, and Christian groups.74

Did these Jews envision pagan and Christian deities as continuous withtheir own? Or, alternatively, did sorrow prompt mourners to appeal to a

range of deities they otherwise understood to be distinct? Te answers tothese questions are impossible to discern, because ancient beliefs ultimatelyremain elusive. What is most conclusive about these images, however, istheir frequencymerged symbols of African Jewish, Christian and pagandeity are common enough in the archaeological record that such patternsappear to be relatively conventional.

Why should scholars ignore, describe as accidental, or label as Chris-tian, those artifacts with features, such as images of crosses within meno-rot? Should artifacts be forced into categories of normative Jewishrepresentation, such that all others are rendered liminal by their traits thatresist scholars established views of ancient Judaism? Merged symbols are

pervasive enough among North African inscriptions to indicate that someJews possessed more complex understandings of divine supplication thantraditional historical and theological models can accommodate.

Conclusion

A brief survey shows that the prevalent methods for studying ancient Juda-ism, on which scholars dominant theories rely, are inadequate, becausethey depend upon rigid essentialist or syncretistic models of culturaldynamics. Tere is no Platonic form of ancient Jewishness, just as there

73) Tis tendency also expresses itself within earlier periods. During the earlier empire, Jew-ish symbols also coincide with markers of specifically pagan devotional practice. Onselected epitaphs Jewish names are joined with the inscribed dedication of the deceased tothe DMSDis Manibus Sanctumthe divine shades of the underworld, e.g., Le Bohec,Inscriptions juives et judasantes, no. 12.74) See treatment in Paula Fredriksen, Gods and One God: In Antiquity, all Monotheistswere Polytheists, BRev18 (2003): 32.


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is no Platonic form of Jewish archaeology, or culture.75Jewish culturalidentity is a more complex question than analyses of Jewish artifacts con-ventionally acknowledge. Individual identities are not necessarily singularand neither are artifactsit is possible for artifacts to simultaneously bear

Jewish, as well asother, cultural indices.76Common methods of analyzingartifacts frequently neglect this probability. Certainly, Jewish practices inantiquity, as well as today, vary by time and region. o ignore this fact is tooverlook what might be most idiosyncratic about Jews in particular geo-graphic locations. By disregarding these shifting features of ancient Jewishculture, scholars may use archaeology to create unsupported fictions about

and to artificially circumscribe ancient Jewish communities. Consideringall of these problems, we must identify new and more nuanced methods ofanalyzing Jewish materials, if we are not to perpetuate the oversights andrigidity embedded in previous analyses.

Information we possess for non-rabbinic Jewish communities in NorthAfrica and elsewhere is so scarce, that applications of different perspectivesto both Christian and Jewish artifacts can entirely change the possibleanalyses of these populations. Did Jews, as well as Christians, use biblicalstories to comfort themselves in their adornment of gifts for their deceased?Did Jews refine their views of death and afterlife in accordance with idealssimilar to those of their North African Christian neighbors? Did some

Jews find it most appropriate to appeal to both Jewish and Christian con-ceptions of deity at death? Te number of artifacts that exhibits these pat-terns suggests affirmative answers to these questions. Lack of definitiveanswers might be dissatisfying to some, but the mere introduction of thesequestions encourages a more honest and realistic evaluation of the evidence.

Tis approach requires closer evaluations of Jewish materials withintheir local environments. Challenges to scholars categories of analysis for

Jewish artifacts and the practices they signify bear distinct ramifications:they expand the possibilities of noticing regionally conventional aspects of

Jewish practice, which might differ from those of other Jewish communities

75)Scholars such as Seth Schwartz have recently critiqued tendencies to describe Juda-isms in the ancient Mediterranean, in Schwartz, Imperialism, 9. Arguments about thecapacious[ness] of a singular Judaism are plausible within discussions of pan-Mediterraneantrends (ibid., 52), while archaeological evidence requires evaluation within its particularlocal setting.76) See approach within Denise Buell, Ethnicity and Religion in Mediterranean Antiquityand Beyond, RelSRev26 (2000): 243-48.


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in the Mediterranean. For example, menorot may be markers of Jewish-ness throughout the Mediterranean and within North African contexts,but other signs of North African Jewishness are more nuanced and areonly discernable through close contextual evaluation. We ought to con-sider other features of artifacts, just as the Jewish features, to determinewhat North African Jewish cultures actually might have looked like.

Tis perspective, additionally, encourages a modification of the types ofquestions commonly asked within scholarship of late ancient Judaism. Forexample, scholars have consistently struggled to define the general mean-ing of the word Jew or the adjective Jewish in the ancient Mediterra-

nean. Tis approach, however, questions the utility of such questions in acultural context at all. It seeks to determine what the category of Jewishmight have meant and how it varied within particular geographic regions,such as North Africa. Certain aspects of Jewish material culture indexsimilarities to Jewish material cultures from elsewhere, but the majorityof North African Jewish materials primarily exhibit distinctively North

African traits. o ignore the materials reflection of North African practicesby emphasizing their comparison with pan-Mediterranean Jewish types isto sustain a deliberately skewed perspective of the history of a culturalminority.77

Tis analysis supports the conclusion that most Jews in North Africa did

not configure categories such as African, Jewish and Christian in theexclusive ways ancient authors or modern scholars have described. It raisespossibilities that North African Jewish identities were acceptably and desir-ably complex, that those who commissioned artifacts possessed varied andcommensurately ranging cultural identifications. We cannot presume aone-to-one relationship between artifact complexity and human complex-ity, but in many cases there may be correlations between them.

Perhaps, by creating a different vision of Jewish culture in North Africa,this analysis invites a reassessment of the artifacts that have been previouslyplaced into the falsely exclusive categories of Jewish, pagan, or Christian.Tis new perspective on the North African evidence, in turn, may engen-der a different type of cultural study. Perhaps the bowl at the Museum of

Fine Arts was commissioned by a Jew, who, like her commissioning of herchilds epitaph, un-problematically and deliberately embraced the icono-graphic and ideological features naturally unified in her complex cultural

77) [please supply footnote text].


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milieu. Perhaps future scholars of these materials and Roman North Afri-can culture more generally, might subsequently begin to ask different andmore productive questions about how complex objects relate to the com-plex identities of those who created them. Te application of more careful,contextualized, and nuanced examinations of the evidence for these popu-lations, promises distinct, improved, and deeper understandings of lateancient North African and Mediterranean Jewish cultures.

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