Shaping Letters, Shaping Communities: Multilingualism and Linguistic Practice in the Late Antique Near East and Egypt

Archaeological findings and epigraphic records from Dura Europos and Apamea on the Orontes illustrate the vitality of two Jewish communities in the first centuries CE, centered around their synagogues, where inscriptions, respectively on clay tiles and graffiti at Dura, and on mosaic at Apamea, offer some insights on the two congregations. Comparable archaeological vestiges and similar epigraphic findings are not available from Palmyra, where inscriptions and artifacts documenting the existence of a Jewish community are decidedly fewer in number and, overall, less evident. With the inscriptions from the synagogues of Dura Europos and Apamea as a starting point, the paper focuses on the different epigraphic languages documented, and explores the connections between these two centers and Palmyra, in the context of a wider network of Jewish communities encompassing Syria and Palestine, and in the framework of mobility and interactions of their members.