Marble as votive offering? Social agency in the post‑Classical Levant

Abstract

This paper combines archaeology and written sources to examine the ways in which marble was used in the churches of the southern Levant in Late Antiquity. In particular, by analyzing the displays of these offerings within the church, and the types of texts engraved on them, it focuses on how, and to what extent, marble donations reflected social position, patronage, and identity. Most of the objects considered here bear inscriptions expressing devotion to saints, martyrs, and prophets, as well as a few quotations from Scripture, but overall, most reflect prayers and invocations by community members. The study therefore attempts to identify the genre of these texts and the objects they adorn to establish the relationship between donation and donor and to provide an analysis of the distribution of these objects within the church proper in the broader regional context of the Late Antique Levant.

Keywords

• marble
• votive inscriptions
• Byzantine churches
• southern Levant
• patronage
• donation