Another symptom of a Jewish religious consciousness at Teucheira is indicated by the Hebrew and theophoric names of the members of the community.
A third symptom is the presence among them of proselytes. Libyan letters appear in some of the epitaphs, and, as we have seen, the name Beischa daughter of Theogeiton is Libyan; her father’s name, moreover, is perhaps to be translated as “proselyte”.[905] The name Sarah, which occurs twice, denotes proselytes or their daughters, and may do so here, as both the women so called had fathers with Greek names; a Cyrenean inscription, indeed, mentions “Sarah, a proselyte” (Σάῤῥα προσήλυτος) explicitly.[906] Libyan customs may also have influenced the Jews of Teucheira, for in one tomb Webster found a skull reposing in an amphora, one of several containing skeletons, and this form of burial is an ancient local form, while Nicolaus of Damascus knew of the Libyan custom of decapitating the dead.[907]
The lack of evidence for Greek culture among the Jews of Teucheira has been remarked upon, but evidence of this sort is scarce throughout the cemetery. It is not easy to decide how far the inscriptions reflect literacy in the community, but evidence exists that Jewish stonecutters worked in Cyrenaica,[908] and usually an illiterate stonecutter reveals illiteracy on the part of his employers. Thus, Δωσίθεος (637) appears side by side with Δοσίθεος, the name Εἰρήνα (680) together with Ἰρήνα (622). The forms Theukles and Theudoros, instead of Theokles and Theodoros, reflect Libyan influence, which regularly converted the omicron to an upsilon.[909] In some epitaphs barbarous letters appear which are undoubtedly Libyan. This should mean that we have here inscriptions cut by Libyan craftsmen, or that their employers were used to the Libyan alphabet, as these signs are not used, except in one or two instances, in their Libyan value.[910]
Several interesting sociological facts can be derived from the Teucheira inscriptions on the life of the town as a whole and on the Jewish community in particular. Firstly, the size of Jewish families. Their reconstruction, of course, involves some risk, as there is no certainty that all the epitaphs are known, and given families may have buried some of their children elsewhere. The reconstruction of fourteen Jewish families is based 011 the assumption that children with the same patronymic and interred in the same tomb or in adjacent tombs, belong to the same family. On this method, seven families have two children, five have three, one has four, and one five. These results, although limited, do not differ greatly from Tcherikover’s finding[911] concerning the Jewish community of Edfu (Apollonipolis) in Egypt, in the Roman period: “There is no trace of families burdened by numerous children, and in so far as the matter can be examined, there is no family the number of whose children exceeds three.”
To this information on the size of Jewish families can be added impressive evidence on the mortality of Jews and gentiles in ancient Teucheira. It is clear that caution must be exercized in regard to a statistical analysis, since the number of people — 163 — whose ages are preserved, is not large. One phenomenon nevertheless stands out; of 101 males and 63 females whose age of death is recorded, 44.5 percent, of the males and 34.9 percent, of the females died up to or at the age of twenty. As a number of children probably died immediately after birth and were not recorded at all, the real mortality must actually have been higher. The figures are:
Jews
0-20 years Total recorded Percentage
Males 28 60 46.6
Females 17 44 38.6
Not proven to be Jews
0-20 years Total recorded Percentage
Males 21 41 51.2
Females 5 19 26.3
B. E. Richardson, who analysed the average longevity of Greeks on epigraphical evidence,[912] reached similar conclusions to the above; she also found 42.3 percent, cases of death up and at the age of 20, the highest mortality being between 16 and 20. These findings are apt to alter on the one hand on account of the numerous old people whose ages were unknown at the time of death, and on the other due to the death of unrecorded infants; yet at Teucheira 13 deaths are recorded of people of 70 and over. Nor is it credible that any unknown figures would greatly alter the impression of the high death-rate up to age of 20.
It may be asked how the community perpetuated itself, with so high a mortality which included the ages of adolescence and marriage. There is indeed evidence for marriage at an early age among the Jews of Teucheira. According to no. 622, Mousaios son of Eu-phrosynos died in Year 1 at the age of 30, and his son Simon died in year 6, at the age of 20. Simon was therefore fourteen when his father died, and was born when his father was 16. Hence the latter’s marriage took place at latest at the age of fifteen, and it may be accepted that marriage at this age was a regular practice if the community was to overcome so high a mortality in its younger age-groups. Frey also found cases of marriage at the ages of 15-16[913] among the Jews of Rome. This high death rate among the Teucheira young also reflects the economic condition of the community, for there was certainly some connection between longevity and conditions of life. It is a logical conclusion that the high mortality among their younger generation was caused not only by the absence of medical aid, but also by a low standard of living and by gruelling physical labour which affected more especially the men.
Although the information is slight and the evidence incomplete, the epitaphs can tell us something of the social position and economic function of part of the Jews of Teucheira. We have seen that some of the deceased were Roman citizens, and the existence of names demonstrating this in two courts where there were numerous Jewish names suggests that there were Jews among them. The name T. Flavius in epitaph no. 615 invites the interpretation that there were here freed slaves of the Flavian Caesars,[914] and manumission was doubtless one of the ways in which some Jews had obtained Roman citizenship. The evidence for slaves in the Jewish community of Teucheira is fairly clear, for no. 619 commemmorates Maker son of Irene (Μάκερ Ἰρήνας), and the recording of his parentage by his mother instead of his father points, in my opinion, to birth outside wedlock. The case is paralleled by no. 658, not certainly Jewish, but it is in Court XV, where most of the burials are those of Jews. Frey indeed explained the recording of some of the deceased by their mothers’ names in the Roman catacombs as evidence that their parents were divorced;[915] it is difficult to refute him, but a third inscription from Teucheira,[916] recording Epikles (born) to the slave-woman Antylla (Ἐπίκλ[η]ς ἐκ δούλης Ἀντύλλας) shows that the first explanation has something to go on, i.e. that this form alludes to a servile origin. There is no evidence whether these slaves were Jews or gentiles. Jewish slavery had virtually disappeared in Judaea at this time,[917] but not necessarily in the Diaspora. In Cyrenaica these may have been Jews redeemed by their brethren, but it is more probable that they were non-Jews who had been circumcised by their Jewish owners.
906
907
Muller,
910
The letters concerned correspond to the first, third and twenty-fifth letters as listed by Halevi-Tourneau (O. Bates,
911
913
914
Cf. the tombstone of Bassara, imperial slave-woman, at Ptolemais (Βάσσαρας Καίσαρο[ς] δούλης) — Pacho,