A few words must be devoted to the name Arimmas (Ἄριμμας). This name is found at Teucheira in four cases among Jews and not less than ten times in non-Jewish inscriptions. We have already seen that it was associated with a wealthy and influential Cyrenean family, which can be traced from the 4th down to the 1st century B.C. (see p. 95, nn. 132, 133). We have already suggested that the name’s frequency among the settlers of Teucheira is to be explained by the possibility that a member of this family in the Ptolemaic period discharged the function of assigning land near Teucheira to katoikoi on behalf of the king, since cases are known in Egypt under Euergetes IT, in which cleruchs took the name of the official in charge of the allotment.[889] The period of these parallels is appropriate to the present case, and it therefore becomes possible that the evidence at Teucheira indicates that katoikoi or cleruchs formed the first nucleus of the settlers whose tombs survive near the town. Chronological considerations have shown that these do not precede the 2nd century B.C. Nevertheless the fact that only four of the 14 cases of the name Arimmas occur east of the town, among the known Jewish concentration, should mean that the colony of katoikoi was not limited to Jews.[890]
Besides the general hellenization manifested by the high proportion of Greek names among the Jews of Teucheira, certain names are such as to throw light on their outlook. Euterpe, daughter of Theodotos,[891] is called after one of the Muses, and no name can point more clearly to pretensions to hellenic culture. Yet we have a parallel at Beth She‛arim in Israel, in the 3rd or 4th century A.D., where a Jewess of Byblos, called after Calliope, the chief Muse, is buried.[892] Schwabe wrote of this name: “I have not found a Jewess with a name like this anywhere else, in Eretz Yisrael or outside it... but it is known that the Jews of Phoenicia were some of the most hellenized.” It may be noted that Calliope is called “matrona” in her epitaph, and was therefore a woman of rank, yet nevertheless was brought to be buried in Eretz Yisrael near the resting place of Rabbi Judah the Prince. Thus such names do not so much indicate complete assimilation as a synthesis between Greek culture and Judaism. It has already been suggested, indeed, that some young Jews were being educated in the gymnasium of Teucheira. But generally it must be admitted that the Jews here do not exhibit signs of a high level of hellenic culture. There is here no known example of a metrical epitaph of the sort so common among the Greeks of Cyrene and Ptolemais, and the like of which can be found among hellenized Jews at Leontopolis and even at Beth She‛arim in Eretz Yisrael. Two such[893] occur among the non-Jewish tombs of Teucheira. Nor do we find here the brief, almost cynical farewells so characteristic of Greeks and sometimes adopted by Jews. Such expressions are generally absent in the Teucheira cemetery. One inscription found by Wright[894] to west of the town, however, greets the deceased, the young “Adonis Hyacinthus”, who died at the age of seventeen, with the word “Be of stout heart (εὐψύχι) Hyacinthus, child.” Most of the line before the word εὐψύχι is uninterpretable. It is true that this tomb, although inscribed with the menorah symbol, is of pronounced hellenizing complexion, on the evidence of the names and the formula; but the greeting εὐψύχι is also common at Beth She‛arim, where it has been interpreted by scholars to relate to the future resurrection of the dead.[895]
Very instructive on the outlook of some of the Jews of Teucheira is the name Timocrates son of Theodotus.[896] Timocrates was born in A.D. 75, five years after the destruction of the Second Temple and two years after the disastrous rising of part of the Jewish population of Cyrene led by Jonathan the Weaver, yet Timocrates was given a pronouncedly non-Jewish name. There is no doubt as to his Jewish identity, for he was buried in the same tomb as four other people possessed of theophoric names, one Dositheos, another his son or daughter. We may further note three names of Jewish context,[897] all derived from the name of the god Apollo-Apollonius, Apollonidas and Apollodorus. This phenomenon is not restricted to Teucheira in the Jewish world of the period, and points to a measure of external assimilation.[898]
Although the evidence of names does not solve the problem of the geographical derivation of the Teucheira Jewish community, it does throw light on the question, and some conclusions may be drawn from it.
A comparison of 144 names with a list of Jewish names occurring in Egyptian papyri of the hellenistic and Roman periods,[899] gives the following picture: 31 names at Teucheira find parallels among Jewish names recorded in papyri, but 23 of them are so common among Jews of the period as a whole that the parallels permit no deductions. But eight names of Teucheiran Jews paralleled in the papyri are not very common, hence it is probably that part of the town’s Jewish community came from Egypt, and that it continued to maintain contacts with that country. A similarity between the tomb-tablets at Leontopolis and those at Teucheira has already been noted, and important from this point of view is the inscribed stele found by Webster in one of the tombs he investigated.[900] The inscription was not completely legible and in itself does not prove the Jewish character of the tomb, but steles of this type were found in the Jewish tombs of Tel el-Yehudiyeh.[901]
One detail may be important for an understanding of the character of the graves to east of the town. This is, that the Egyptian calendar is the accepted calendar of the eastern cemetery, and the recording of the ages of the deceased is the rule. Both features make the impression of belonging to a common tradition, and whatever the reason, this loyalty to the Egyptian calendar suggests either an Egyptian origin or a strong attachment to a political regime centered there, i.e. to the Ptolemaic dynasty. It would not be wise to decide on this evidence whether the majority, and not merely some of the burials to the east of Teucheira were Jewish. But it may be suggested with a greater degree of probability that this cemetery was that of people descended from katoikoi and soldiers settled in the town by the Ptolemies.
On the other hand it is an interesting fact that the place of origin of the deceased is inscribed in the eastern cemetery in one case only (661).[902] By contrast, people from Didyma, Thrace, Demetrias (Thessaly or Damascus), Aksine (Sicily?), Bithynia and Nysa (the town of Asia Minor, or perhaps Beth Shean) are recorded on graffiti on the city-wall or associated buildings in the west of the city.
As stated, two cases only are known in which menorah symbols are incised by the graves. Unfortunately we do not know what was the inscription associated with one of them and the inscription associated with that in the western cemetery included no date. But the accepted view is that the menorah symbol was not cut on funerary monuments prior to the destruction of the Second Temple.[903] Two such symbols do indeed appear in the Alfasi Street tomb in Jerusalem, not used after the reign of Tiberius,[904] and show that it could appear earlier, but there is little doubt that its wide popularity as a funerary and decorative figure began only after 70. We shall see later that there is reason to believe that its first centre of diffusion was Cyrenaica itself; the Teucheira evidence supports the view that its main diffusion took place after the Destruction, for the presence of no more than two examples is appropriate to a cemetery where the Jewish burials are not later than A.D. 115 and the datable majority are before 94/5.
889
P. Tebt. 64 (e) iii; 72, 322 etc.;
890
The name Arimmas is also found in a list of settlers settled near Ptolemais in the time of Pompey (circa 67 BC) — Reynolds,
894
895
One may recall in this connection the supposed belief of Jason of Cyrene, author of the original book of which II
899
The comparison was made with the aid of the card-catalogue of the late Professor Tcherikover, and I would like to record his generous assistance in this matter.
900
Wright,
901
E. Naville,