Palmyra Tariff

Last updated
Palmyra Tariff
Hermitage room 91 - Palmyra 02.jpg
The tariff in the Hermitage Museum
Material Limestone
Created2nd century CE
Discovered1881
Palmyra, Homs, Syria
Discovered by Semyon Abamelek-Lazarev
Present location Saint Petersburg, Russia

The Palmyra Tariff is an ancient bilingual limestone inscription discovered in Palmyra, Syria. Dating to the 2nd century CE, the inscription provides valuable insights into the economic and political structure of the city and the wider Roman Empire. It is the longest lapidary Aramaic inscription ever found. [1]

Contents

It was discovered in 1881 by Semyon Abamelek-Lazarev, and in 1901 was gifted by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II to Tsar Nicholas II and is now in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. [2] [3]

Historian John Matthews described the tariff as "one of the most important single items of evidence for the economic life of any part of the Roman Empire". [4]

The inscription is known as PAT 0259, CIS II 3913, NSI 147 and TSSI IV 37.

Economic Regulation

The primary focus of the Palmyra Tariff Inscription is to outline the tariffs and duties imposed on a range of goods and commodities passing through Palmyra. These tariff rates were established to regulate trade and generate essential revenue for the city. The detailed information on specific tariffs offers a comprehensive view of the economic activities that contributed to Palmyra's prosperity. [5]

The inscription also enumerates the names of officials responsible for overseeing trade matters. This provides valuable insights into the administrative structure of Palmyra during the period.

Layout

iiiiiiiv
Greek Heading (Greek ii 1–2)?
Aramaic Heading (Aramaic ii 1)


Main Greek Text (Greek i 1–13)

Aramaic ii c 100–148Aramaic ii b 51–99Aramaic ii a 2–50Greek iii a 1–47Greek iii b 48–93Greek iii c 49–140Greek iv a 141–97Greek iv b 198–237


Main Aramaic Text (Aramaic i 1–11)


Greek i
14–15 inserted in Aramaic after line 11;
Aramaic i 12–13 follow

Aramaic ii 149

Bibliography

See also

Related Research Articles

Ferentina was the patron goddess of the city Ferentinum, Latium. She was protector of the Latin commonwealth. She was also closely associated with the Roman Empire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arval Brethren</span> Ancient Roman college of priests

In ancient Roman religion, the Arval Brethren or Arval Brothers were a body of priests who offered annual sacrifices to the Lares and gods to guarantee good harvests. Inscriptions provide evidence of their oaths, rituals and sacrifices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melchior de Vogüé</span> French archaeologist (1829–1916)

Charles-Jean-Melchior de Vogüé was a French archaeologist, diplomat, and member of the Académie française in seat 18.

Tectamus was a king of Crete and hero of ancient Hellenic mythology. He was also called Tectaphus (Τέκταφος), Teutamus (Τεύταμος), Tectauus (Τεκταῦος) and Tectaeus (Τεκταῖος).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Odaenathus</span> King of Palmyra from 260 to 267

Septimius Odaenathus was the founder king (Mlk) of the Palmyrene Kingdom who ruled from Palmyra, Syria. He elevated the status of his kingdom from a regional center subordinate to Rome into a formidable state in the Near East. Odaenathus was born into an aristocratic Palmyrene family that had received Roman citizenship in the 190s under the Severan dynasty. He was the son of Hairan, the descendant of Nasor. The circumstances surrounding his rise are ambiguous; he became the lord (ras) of the city, a position created for him, as early as the 240s and by 258, he was styled a consularis, indicating a high status in the Roman Empire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Jacques Barthélemy</span> French writer and numismatist (1716–1795)

Jean-Jacques Barthélemy was a French scholar who became the first person to decipher an extinct language. He deciphered the Palmyrene alphabet in 1754 and the Phoenician alphabet in 1758.

Teutamus was a Macedonian officer, who, in 319 BC, shared with Antigenes the command of the select troops called the Argyraspids.

Henri Pognon was a French archaeologist, epigrapher, and specialist in Assyriology.

William Seston was a 20th-century French historian and epigrapher, a specialist of the history of the Roman Empire. He was professor at the Sorbonne and a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.

Philippe-Ernest Legrand was a French Hellenist. An historian, philologist, archaeologist, epigrapher, his great work was the translation and editing of Histories (Herodotus), published in the Collection Budé, which is still a reference.

Shadrafa is a poorly-attested Canaanite (Punic) god of healing or medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portraits of Odaenathus</span> Artwork identified as King Odaenathus of Palmyra

Odaenathus, the king of Palmyra from 260 to 267 CE, has been identified by modern scholars as the subject of sculptures, seal impressions, and mosaic pieces. His city was part of the Roman Empire, and he came to dominate the Roman East when in 260 he defeated Shapur I, the Sasanian emperor of Persia, who had invaded the Roman Empire. Odaenathus besieged the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon in 263, and although the city did not fall, the campaign led to a full restoration of Roman provinces taken by Shapur I. In the aftermath of his Persian war, Odaenathus assumed the title King of Kings, which was a challenge to the Persian monarch's claims of authority in the region. Odaenathus ruled the Roman East unopposed with imperial consent. In 267, he was assassinated alongside his eldest son Herodianus while conducting a campaign against Germanic raiders in Bithynia; he was succeeded by his son Vaballathus under the regency of the widow queen Zenobia.

Aïcha Ben Abed is an archaeologist and Director of Monuments and Sites at the Institut National du Patrimoine, Tunisia. She is one of the world's leading authorities on the mosaics of Roman Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum</span> 1881–1962 ancient inscriptions collection

The Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum is a collection of ancient inscriptions in Semitic languages produced since the end of 2nd millennium BC until the rise of Islam. It was published in Latin. In a note recovered after his death, Ernest Renan stated that: "Of all I have done, it is the Corpus I like the most."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neirab steles</span> Ancient funerary stela

The Neirab steles are two 8th-century BC steles with Aramaic inscriptions found in 1891 in Al-Nayrab near Aleppo, Syria. They are currently in the Louvre. They were discovered in 1891 and acquired by Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau for the Louvre on behalf of the Commission of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. The steles are made of black basalt, and the inscriptions note that they were funerary steles. The inscriptions are known as KAI 225 and KAI 226.

The Athenian Greek-Phoenician inscriptions are 18 ancient Phoenician inscriptions found in the region of Athens, Greece. They represent the second largest group of foreign inscriptions in the region after the Thracians. 9 of the inscriptions are bilingual Phoenician-Greek and written on steles. Almost all of them bear the indication of the deceased's city of origin, not just the more general designation of their ethnicity, like most other non-Greek inscriptions in the region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ankh-Hapy stele</span> Egyptian-Aramaic stele

The Ankh-Hapy stele is an Egyptian-Aramaic stele dated to 525–404 BCE. It was first published in a letter from François Lenormant to Ernest Renan in the Journal asiatique; Lenormant had noticed the stele in the Vatican collections and had brought a cast from Rome in 1860. Lenormant considered the stele to be reminiscent of the Carpentras Stele.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pricot de Sainte-Marie steles</span> Group of Punic funerary steles

The Pricot de Sainte-Marie steles are more than 2,000 Punic funerary steles found in Carthage near the ancient forum by French diplomat Jean-Baptiste Evariste Charles Pricot de Sainte-Marie in the 1870s. The find was dramatic both in the scale—the largest single discovery of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions—and also due to the finds almost being lost in the sinking of the French ironclad Magenta at Toulon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annie Sartre-Fauriat</span> French historian and epigrapher

Annie Sartre-Fauriat, born Annie Fauriat on 17 November 1947, is a French historian specialising in funerary archaeology and Greek and Latin epigraphy of the Greco-Roman Near East, as well as travel and travellers in the East in both the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Henchir Guergour Neopunic inscriptions are a series of ten Neopunic inscriptions discovered by René Cagnat at Henchir Guergour, also known as Masculula, near Touiref in the Kef Governorate of Tunisia. Two of the inscriptions are known as KAI 143–144, and three are kept at the Louvre.

References