Evidence ID
E01859Saint Name
Domninos, martyr in Palestine, ob. 308 : S00190
Theophilos, martyr in Palestine, ob. 308 : S00935Saint Name in Source
Δωμνῖνος
ΘεόφιλοςType of Evidence
Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)Language
GreekEvidence not before
450Evidence not after
750Activity not before
450Activity not after
750Place of Evidence - Region
Syria with Phoenicia
Syria with Phoenicia
Syria with PhoeniciaPlace of Evidence - City, village, etc
Ḥarāke
Apamea on the Orontes
AndronaPlace of evidence - City name in other Language(s)
Ḥarāke
Thabbora
Thabbora
Apamea on the Orontes
Thabbora
Thabbora
Androna
Thabbora
ThabboraCult activities - Non Liturgical Practices and Customs
Prayer/supplication/invocationSource
Fragment of a basalt lintel, broken and lost at the right-hand end; the left-hand end was buried when recorded. Preserved dimensions: H. 0.44 m; W. 1.01 m. Decorated with low-relief carving of a cross with eight arms, within a circle (0.43 m in diameter).
Found in the outskirts of the village of Ḥarāke by the Princeton Archaeological Expedition to Syria. First published by William Prentice in 1922. Republished by René Mouterde in 1955, based on the edition by Prentice.Discussion
The inscription is very fragmentarily preserved, but given the form of the stone with the characteristic cross in the centre and the text written in two columns to the right and to the left of it, we can safely assume that it was once displayed on a lintel, over a doorway. Prentice offered a possible reconstruction of the text with saints Domninos and Theophilos as addressees of this invocation, but this completion is entirely hypothetical. Domninos and Theophilos belong to a group of Palestinian martyrs, venerated on 5th November according to the Synaxary of the Church of Constantinople. Halkin was reluctant to acknowledge this text as an attestation to their cult. Mouterde commented that this restoration is very dubious, but he reprinted it as the main text of his edition, and not in the apparatus. Peña accepts the restoration without any discussion.
Dating: This kind of Syriac lintel inscription is characteristic of the late 5th or 6th c.Bibliography
Edition:
Jalabert, L., Mouterde, R., Mondésert, Cl., Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie, vol. 4: Laodicée, Apamène (BAH 61, Paris: Librairie orientalise Paul Geuthner, 1955), no. 1583.
Prentice, W.K. (ed.), Publications of the Princeton University of archaeological Expeditions to Syria in 1904-1905 and 1909, Division III: Greek and Latin Inscriptions, Section B: Northern Syria (Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1922), 101, no. 1033.
Further reading:
Halkin, F., "Inscriptions grecques relatives à l'hagiographie, II, Les deux Phénicies et et les deux Syries", Analecta Bollandiana 67 (1949), 102, note 9.
Peña, I., Lieux de pèlerinage en Syrie (Milan: Franciscan Printing Press, 2000), 32.
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