A Dated Inscription from Beth Sheʿarim and the Use and Abuse of Palaeography.

Over the past five years Prof. Jonathan Price and myself have been engaged in an epigraphic survey of Beth She’arim for the renewed publication of all the inscriptions in the forthcoming fifth volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae. During this survey two rediscovered inscriptions from catacomb 1 turned out to be a single billingual inscription dated by the era of the destruction the Second Temple. The inscription dates to the fifth century CE and constitutes direct evidence to continued use of the site well beyond the excavators` terminal date for the use of the cemetery in 363 CE. Furthermore the inscription is located in a room considered as one of the earliest rooms in the catacomb. The location of the inscription forces one to rethink the stratigrphy of the entire catacomb. Since no other dated inscriptions from Beth She`arim survived, the lecture will also discuss what can and what cannot be used as paleographic markers in painted inscriptions such as those discovered in this famous necropolis.