Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Hadrian inscription in Jerusalem

NEWS FLASH: WATCH: 2,000-year-old inscription dedicated to Roman emperor unveiled in Jerusalem. Israel Antiquities Authority: This is among the most important Latin inscriptions ever discovered in Jerusalem. (Jerusalem Post).
A rare fragment of a stone engraved with an official Latin inscription dedicated to the Roman emperor Hadrian, discovered in the capital in July by the Antiquities Authority, was unveiled at Rockefeller Museum in east Jerusalem Tuesday morning.

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The inscriptions [sic], consisting of six lines of Latin text engraved on hard limestone, was read and translated by Avner Ecker and Hannah Cotton of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The English translation of the inscription is as follows: “To the Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, son of the deified Traianus Parthicus, grandson of the deified Nerva, high priest, invested with tribunician power for the 14th time, consul for the third time, father of the country (dedicated by) the 10th legion Fretensis Antoniniana.”

Ecker, a Ph.D candidate, said the inscription was dedicated by Legio X Fretensis to the emperor Hadrian in the year 129/130 CE.

“The fragment of the inscription revealed by the IAA archaeologists is none other than the right half of a complete inscription, the other part of which was discovered nearby in the late nineteenth century, and was published by the pre-eminent French archaeologist Charles Clermont-Ganneau,” he said.

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