Posted on 03/28/2020 8:04:49 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Throughout the ancient world, many people, including Jews, carved and painted words and pictures (we might call them graffiti today) in places that would shock modern sensibilities -- inside and around holy spaces and shrines, pagan sanctuaries, synagogues, and churches; and throughout cemeteries, necropoleis, and tombs in regions of modern Israel, Syria, Greece, Italy, Malta, Sardinia, Tunisia, and Libya. The ancients also made their marks in other locations: upon cliffs and open-air sanctuaries along desert roads and trade routes of Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, and Saudi Arabia; and around public theaters and hippodromes (horse racecourses) along the Syrian coast (modern Lebanon) and Asia Minor (the Asian portion of modern Turkey).
Jews and their neighbors did not write these markings to deface, destroy, or vandalize, as modern analogies might suggest. Quite the opposite -- the purpose was to express piety, reverence, devotion, commemoration, love, and pride. Unlike in modern societies, acts of graffiti writing were often licit, desirable, and even encouraged.
Most people aren't familiar with these graffiti, and many scholars and specialists still dismiss them as random and incidental scribbles. Yet examination of Judahite and Jewish graffiti, of which hundreds survive from the seventh century B.C.E. through the seventh century C.E., singlehandedly promises to transform the study of the Jewish past. As I suggest in my recent book, they offer unexpected insights into the daily lives and activities of the nonelite Jews who wrote them...
So what exactly are we talking about when we say "graffiti"? What do they look like? Some include written signatures and messages -- in Greek, Aramaic, Latin, Hebrew, or Arabic scripts and languages. Others consist of abstract letters or signs. Still others depict images, such as skeletons, obelisks, quadrupeds, birds, ships, menorahs, and riders astride horses.
(Excerpt) Read more at biblicalarchaeology.org ...
The mortuary context of this menorah (cut onto a doorjamb of Catacomb 12 in Beit Shearim) suggests that graffiti were meant to somehow assist the deceased or sanctify the space. This and similar graffiti also show that -- despite rabbinic disapproval of spending excessive time in impure places -- some Jews spent protracted periods of time in cemeteries and burial caves, engaging spatially and corporeally with the dead and their resting places. Photo: Ezra Gabbay.
In before the first stooge, and all subsequent stooges, complains about the nomenclature used by a Jewish writer to refer to ancient Jewish activities.
Whoops.
The mortuary context of this menorah (cut onto a doorjamb of Catacomb 12 in Beit Shearim) suggests that graffiti were meant to somehow assist the deceased or sanctify the space. This and similar graffiti also show that -- despite rabbinic disapproval of spending excessive time in impure places -- some Jews spent protracted periods of time in cemeteries and burial caves, engaging spatially and corporeally with the dead and their resting places. Photo: Ezra Gabbay.
Romani ite domum
- monty python
One of Lucasfilms few box office losers.
I still remember the ads:
"Where were you in 5722?"
There are graffiti in the Sinai mines, in Hebrew, left by slaves there under Pharaoh. (You can see them by googling “sinai inscriptions”, and then selecting “images” from the top menu bar.
And yes, one of them reads (paraphrased), “We’re still slaves, but Moses has startled Egypt...”
(Or see the book, “The World’s Oldest Alphabet”, by Petrovich, for more on the same.)
LOL!
Graffiti is important in identifying sites and cultures. It’s how archeologists know that Roman soldiers typically spoke Latin and also used as further evidence that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is where the tomb of Christ was.
I seems most prefer Curly but I was always a Shemp fan. That was for his acting though. I dont believe Ive ever seen his spray can expressions.
I see what you did there.....................
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Note: this topic is from . Just a photo URL update that is mostly for me. :^)
The mortuary context of this menorah (cut onto a doorjamb of Catacomb 12 in Beit Shearim) suggests that graffiti were meant to somehow assist the deceased or sanctify the space. This and similar graffiti also show that -- despite rabbinic disapproval of spending excessive time in impure places -- some Jews spent protracted periods of time in cemeteries and burial caves, engaging spatially and corporeally with the dead and their resting places. Photo: Ezra Gabbay.
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