DEATH IN ROMAN SYRIA

A traveler on the way to the Roman city of Berytus, modern Beirut, would pass through the cemetery just before reaching the town. Tall, built structures, elevated on bedrock outcrops, the tombs of this cemetery of the 1st and 2nd c. CE could not escape the attention of any passer-by. Inside, marble sarcophagi imported from Turkey and locally produced limestone coffins held members of the prominent families of the city. Others were buried in pits or in stacked niches inside the walled enclosures of the tombs. Gifts of jewelry, clothing, glass vessels, and coins accompanied the deceased. In this way, the people of Roman Beirut followed the funerary rituals of their forefathers, who placed great importance on the adornment of the body and the need to protect and appease the dead. The shapes of the tombs surrounding Roman Beirut, however, were hardly reminiscent of earlier types. The simple and unmarked graves of the pre-Roman burial grounds had given way to a great variety of shapes, sizes, and modes of decoration. Tombs now rose prominently along the main roads. Brightly painted decoration adorned the walls and well-executed reliefs covered the expensive coffins. Beirutis were not the only ones to revamp the architecture of funerary commemoration. Several hundred kilometers to the northeast, in the rural Syrian Limestone Plateau, inhabitants of the town of Qatura carved stylized portraits in the cliff wall, accompanied by Greek epitaphs, dedicated in the 2nd c. CE to deceased fathers, wives, and husbands. The practice of using prominent cliffs to cut out spaces for the dead had an earlier history in this region, although it was never employed on such an elaborate scale. New in the Roman period were the additions of dates, names, and faces to the grave-sites and an emphasis on individual identity and family groups. In Emesa, modern Homs, descendants perhaps of local royalty built a tomb that towered over the settlement and made use of a novel material: Roman brick work or opus reticulatum.

SYRIAN CEMETERIES ARE TESTAMENT TO THE STRONG TRENDS OF convergence in funerary customs, peaking in the 2nd c. CE. Even though cemeteries in the province displayed great diversity and regional tastes, they also reveal similar attitudes to display, representation, adornment, and collectivity of burial. These burial grounds did not look the same, but the choices regarding the construction of the tombs operated on the same principles. In fact, diversity was one of these principles, as tombs were designed according to regional fashion. This chapter discusses these moments of convergence in funerary customs, as well as the return to more divergent patterns.

In order to interpret the converging trends in Syria, it is necessary to step outside the provincial boundaries. Earlier scholarship on Roman Syria often fails to do this, and instead stresses the local continuities. As discussed in the Introduction, in these narratives Rome often appears as an absent ruler, whose impact remained minimal in Syria. The material record itself may point this way. If one expected to find the brick tombs of the Via Appia or epitaphs erected in Latin by freedmen, to name two “typically Roman” customs, one would be disappointed. Yet, Syrian cemeteries did not develop in isolation from the cultural and socio-political context of the time. Rather, the moments of relatively rapid change in local ritual, as demonstrated with funerary practices throughout this book, need to be understood in the circumstances of the time. The not-so-“Roman”-looking material record, in fact, holds clues about Syrians as part of the Roman Empire. Take, for example, the popularity of funerary portraits in Roman Syria. Figural reliefs on stelae had pre-Roman forerunners, and one could explain the widespread occurrence of portraits on Roman tombs in Syria as emerging out of older practices. In other words, these reliefs were tied to local traditions. The Roman period witnessed an increased production of such stelae, as well as their expansion to new regions of the province. The problem with such reasoning is that the popularity of funerary portraits was not limited to Syria, but, instead, extended across the Roman world. Portraits represented new ways of displaying and advertising individual and group identity for many provincial communities, as well as people in Rome itself. The use of funerary portraits in Syria, despite having pre-Roman antecedents, cannot solely be considered a local phenomenon.

The last chapter finished by pointing to new areas of investigation, and in particular to the Byzantine countryside, where funerary customs remained central to the expression of local identity in imperial settings. Throughout this book, I have identified other topics that would greatly benefit from further analysis. This postscript reflects on these and intends to take stock: where we are now and what needs to be done.

Let us start with the here and now. As I write this, in the winter of 2015, the civil war is raging in Syria. As this book took shape, I experienced the distinct displeasure of writing about cemeteries and tombs while they were being destroyed by shelling, looting, and, in some cases, the dynamite of fanatics. Palmyra has presented us with particularly heartbreaking examples of the vulnerability of cultural heritage and the people who strive to protect this heritage. The losses to Syrian cultural heritage are immense, and the damage of historical and archaeological sites, museums, archives, and storehouses, as well as the murder and displacement of local heritage workers, is still ongoing.

If something good has come out of the devastation, it is the flourishing of initiatives for the digital preservation of cultural heritage. People in Syria and across the globe have seized on the opportunity to employ new digital and online techniques to record and disseminate the extensive archival resources concerning Syria. Similar initiatives are underway for the heritage of Iraq. Virtually restoring lost and inaccessible heritage is a potent answer to the cultural crimes being committed in the region. I hope that these trends continue, and that the online database that accompanies this book, originally meant as a resource for further investigation, will also serve as a form of digital preservation of tombs from Roman Syria.

This brings me to the next point, regarding so-called “legacy data.” Much of the information used for this book was collected a hundred years ago or so, and found in archives. This material can be difficult to access and analyze; yet it is there. The methodological framework employed centers on dealing with fragmented and decontextualized funerary assemblages. I hope to have demonstrated that it is possible to work with such data. Now that Syrian sites and museums are not accessible, we still have excavation reports, survey notes, and epigraphic corpora to consider.

THIS CHAPTER INVESTIGATES A DIFFERENT TYPE OF SPACE, THAT OF THE built tomb. What were the dominant guidelines in designing a final resting place? How were tombs built, organized, and decorated? This chapter is not concerned with in-depth descriptions of the architectural features of the tombs, an effort that would be thwarted in any case by large gaps in the available data. Rather, it aims to identify the overarching patterns in the way people were buried, and how these inform us about funerary rituals. The previous chapter signaled the persistence of older customs in the Roman period, such as the continuous use of pre-Roman cemeteries. As cities expanded, additional burial grounds were created, and it is here that new concepts of cemetery space, related to visibility and spatial connections between the tomb and settlement, started to appear. This chapter takes the theme of continuity and change to the tomb itself.

The first part of the chapter presents an overview of the different architectural types by summarizing the more extensive discussion of tomb types presented in Appendix 2. A discussion about the reliability of the distributions of tomb types precedes this section. The second part investigates the combinations of different types across space and time, and assesses the degrees of diversity and uniformity in Syrian cemeteries. These are then compared to pre-Roman practices and connected to changing concepts of funerary display. The discussion at the end of the chapter problematizes the sample a bit further by focusing on research biases inherent in the data set. It concludes with an investigation of the possible architecture models for the new elements in the tomb architecture, and places Syrian mortuary practices in the cultural milieu of the East Mediterranean, Rome, and the Iranian world.

TOMB TYPES

We can distinguish at least nine distinct architectural types of tomb in the sample from the Roman period. These immediately tell us that Syrians did not choose similar grave forms, or bury the dead in tombs of the same size, outlook, and material. Far from it, in fact. The funerary assemblage is characterized by a great eclecticism in architectural shapes and forms of decoration. In order to give a sense of the range, this section describes each of the architectural types separately. First, however, a few methodological notes are necessary.