An inscribed Roman sarcophagus from Elazığ (eastern Turkey) with an appendix on a Latin military inscription

Abstract

We present a previously-unknown sarcophagus of the Roman period with a fragmentary and hard-to-decipher inscription in Greek, today exhibited in the grounds of the Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum of Elazığ in eastern Turkey. A personal name can still be deciphered on the front face of the sarcophagus: Menethymes. Elazığ Museum possesses a large collection of archaeological artefacts, especially from the rescue excavations at the höyük (tell or mound) sites in the area of the Keban dam construction in the 1960s and 1970s. The number of Roman artefacts in this museum is c. 100, excluding numismatic finds. This brief paper makes a contribution to the scanty knowledge of Roman-era funerary monuments in eastern Turkey. In the appendix, we also give the text of one of the most important finds at the same museum, a Latin military inscription from AD 64/65 on Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo and the Parthian war.

Keywords

• sarcophagus
• museum of elazığ
• harput
• eastern turkey
• roman period
• graeco-roman epigraphy
• graeco-roman onomastics
• roman archaeology
• latin military inscription