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Chapter 2. The Hellenistic Catalogue of Priests from Nysa-Scythopolis/Beth Shean: Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 8 33

2023; Volume: 112; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tap.2023.a918758

2325-9264

Kyle W. Mahoney,

Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies

Chapter 2. The Hellenistic Catalogue of Priests from Nysa-Scythopolis/Beth Shean: Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 8 33 Kyle W. Mahoney (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (SEG) 8 33—a catalogue of the priests of Zeus Olympios, the Theoi Soteres, the royal ancestors of the Seleucid king, and King Demetrios II Nikator—is the only Hellenistic inscription documenting the religious life of Scythopolis (Figure 2.1). [End Page 17] The inscription is, moreover, one of only two Hellenistic stone stelai recovered from Tel Beth Shean, and it also constitutes the oldest reference to Zeus in the Decapolis.1 Although other stone inscriptions have been recovered in the lower city, SEG 8 33 remains the only one discovered on the tel. In this chapter, I present a new edition of the text and provide an exhaustive historical commentary that accounts for the stone’s original Hellenistic display context as well as its Nachleben during the Roman imperial era. The Appendix contains a chronologically ordered Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2.1. SEG 8 33, general view. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology 29-107-961. Photo: Penn Museum, reproduced with permission. [End Page 18] list of the published or noted Greek inscriptions from Scythopolis, which is intended to aid further epigraphic research. SEG 8 33 has, for the most part, been analyzed with reference to the local religious history of Scythopolis, particularly as it regards the debate over which god was worshiped in the temple on Tel Beth Shean.2 Although this is an important issue that I shall address in due course, the greater historical significance of the text has yet to be fully realized. The primary aim of my commentary is to fill this gap and to suggest that we must place this inscription in the context of the struggles that pitted Demetrios II Nikator first against Alexander Balas and Diodotos Tryphon for supremacy in the region from 145 to 138 BCE, and subsequently against his brother, Antiochos VII Sidetes, and the pretender Alexander Zabinas from 129–125 BCE. These struggles had originated when the Treaty of Apameia (188 BCE) required Antiochos III to send hostages to Rome.3 With crown princes and even reigning kings held in captivity at Rome and among the Parthians, other contenders were able to make claims on the Seleucid throne, and for more than a generation the descendants of Seleukos IV and Antiochos IV—as well as their supporters—fought for supremacy and legitimacy on battlefields, in poleis, and in temples.4 Eventually, the intertwined families of the brothers [End Page 19] Demetrios II and Antiochos VII—who were both married to Kleopatra Thea, who had children with both brothers—resulted in further rivalry that pitted Antiochos VIII Grypos, son of Demetrios II, against Antiochos IX Kyzikenos, son of Antiochos VII. In these seemingly incessant civil wars, Seleucid monarchs and their supporters recognized that manipulation of the royal cult offered both a path to acceptance as ruler and a means to deprive rivals of such acceptance. The erasure and (perhaps) subsequent replacement of royal names in inscriptions of this era from this region thus exhibit a kind of Seleucid damnatio memoriae, not unlike what is seen in the Roman imperial period, if on a lesser scale. The importance and significance of this phenomenon is addressed in the present chapter. At the close of the chapter, I switch gears to discuss the later life of the inscription, which became a historical artifact that documented the Hellenic past of what had become the Roman city of Scythopolis. As Irene Romano notes in Chapter 3, Scythopolitans of the imperial era took great pride in the Hellenic origins of their city, and the text of SEG 8 33—the only Greek stone inscription that we have from Tel Beth Shean and the oldest from Scythopolis—stimulated the historical imagination of Roman Scythopolis.5 I conclude this chapter by suggesting that, along with sculptural material studied by Romano, this inscription played a part in the maintenance of this Greek identity and the active construction of the past in Roman Scythopolis.6 TEXT AND EPIGRAPHICAL NOTES7 145...