About this site

This database is the result of the Project “Prosopographica Palmyrena”, graciously funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).

It´s main purpose is to provide a searchable Database of all known attestations for Persons found within Palmyrene Inscriptions. To achieve this aim, three main corpora were consulted: The Palmyrene Aramaic Texts (PAT) compiled by Delbert Hillers and Eleonora Cussini, the IGLS XVII by Jean-Baptiste Yon and the supplement to the PAT, again published by Yon.

Together, more than 3800 Inscriptions were researched, leading to upwards of 8000 attestations. Each entry was made on a per-inscription-basis. If there is a high likelihood of an identity between individuals mentioned in two or more inscrpitions, this is mentioned under the field “likely identical with”. Be advised that there may be other occurrences of the same person that were not mentioned within this field. This is since the bulk of Palmyrene Inscriptions are undated. Also, for many Inscriptions the original setting is unknown, making connections to individual burial sides or the like difficult.

For each Attestation, a variety of Data was collected:
a) The Name of any person in (if present) Palmyrene, Greek, and Latin
b) The Genealogy and / or family of any person in any language present (Palmyrene, Greek and Latin).

This was then dived into:

• name,
• child of,
• grandchild of,
• great-grandchild of,
• descendant of,
• parent of,
• grandparent of,
• great-grandparent of,
• ancestor of,
• brother of,
• uncle / aunt of,
• niece / nephew of,
• brother /sister of,
• cousin of,
• child in law of,
• parent in law of ,
• spouse of.

If applicable, this information was collected in all three languages present in the Corpus.

From the name and family information, the sex of the person in question could be derived and was entered as well (if applicable – sometimes it remains unclear)

Furthermore, each inscription was searched for:

• Type/ name of office, social standing and / or employment (Butcher, Symposiarch, Grammateus, Soldier, Freedman, Patron etc.)
• Roman citizenship,
• worshipped gods,
• tribal affiliation.

If applicable, further information – e.g. the institution or person setting up an honorary inscription or locations mentioned were noted under “further remarks.” Another charter indicates the likely identity of one person with a namesake from a different inscription. In addition to this, the information provided by the edition was also added:

• The type of the Inscription (honorary, funerary, funerary cession etc.)
• The location of the Inscription (if known in detail, if not only the mere city, i.e. Palmyra)
• The material of the Inscription (i.e. on column, on relief, on Tessera etc.)

Currently this dataset is mainly searchable via the Corpus, the Alphabetical Index, the Date and the Personal Name in question. Further search options (i.e. Citizenship, Occupation, type of Inscription, location) will be added in the future.