INCRIPTIONS FROM PALAESTINA TERTIA: THE GREEK INSCRIPTIONS FROM GHOR ES-SAFI (BYZANTINE ZOORA) (SUP VOL. IB

The present volume is complementary to volume Ia, entitled Inscriptions from Palaestina Tertia: The Greek Inscriptions from Ghor es-Safi (Byzantine Zoom) and published in 2005, which contained 321 inscribed funerary stelae from this area (and another 20 bearing only symbols). Vol. Ib includes 66 new inscriptions from the Ghor es-Safi area (Byzantine Zoora), also one from Khirbet Qazone and 13 from Feinan (Byzantine Phaeno). The vast majority of the Ghor es-Safi epigraphic material (64 inscriptions) originates from the An-Naq cemetery, a burial site since Early Bronze Age located on the south bank of the Wadi aI-Has a, where all the tombstones of the first volume were found (IPT Ιa, p. 6 and p. 7, fig. 3). From the remaining two inscriptions, one comes from the site of Khirbet Sheikh Isa next to the cemetery, probably identified with the Byzantine town of Zoo ra, whereas the other from Umm Tawabeen, a large Nabataean-Roman fortress on the southeastern hill above the Wadi al-Hasa. It should be noted that 38 of the 64 An-Naq cemetery epitaphs have already appeared in a preliminary publication in an Appendix to volume IPT Ιa but here are properly published, while the remaining 27 are new and have been collected during the last three years. Most of the latter (those with the z prefix in the inventory number) were registered by K.D. Politis and another six were copied and photographed by me, four at the office of the Department of Antiquities in Safi, one at the Franciscan Archaeological Institute on Mount Nebo and one at the Jordan Archaeological Museum in Amman. A number of them were available to us through photographs placed at my disposal by Dr. Fawzi Zayadine (13 inscriptions), by Prof. Hamzeh Mahasneh (3 inscriptions) and by the Department of Antiquities in Amman (4 inscriptions). More than 30 unpublished Greek inscriptions from An-Naq cemetery have also come to my attention, however access to them is difficult since they are kept in private collections. Fi