Various indications have already been noted suggesting that not a few of the Teucheira community were descended from military settlers settled by the Ptolemies. This and the cultural tradition of the eastern cemetery mean that the community included katoikoi or cleruchs holding crown land in the vicinity of the town. The evidence derivable from the name Arimmas points to the formation of the colony in the 2nd century B.C., probably under Euergetes II (163-116 B.C.),[918] and we may note the title “Macedonian” attached to an anonymous epitaph in the eastern cemetery; it is likely that the term is not ethnic but relates to membership of a military unit trained and armed in the Macedonian manner, like the Jewish “phyle” in the garrison of Alexandria, (p. 133).[919]
Both the character and topographical position of the town of Teucheira are such as to confirm that the Jews there worked in agriculture. The city appears to have possessed no harbour; there are traces of a fishing-quay or sea wall. The immediate vicinity was wooded in ancient times, and the remains of small ancient farmhouses can be seen on the coastal plain to south, east and west of Teucheira,[920] which, like most Greek towns, subsisted mainly on agriculture and to a lesser extent on crafts, eked out with fishing and perhaps a little coastwise trade. The town’s area seems to have altered little from the 4th century B.C. to the Byzantine epoch, and even larger cities contained a majority of cultivators who worked the land about them; Teucheira hardly differed in this respect. Most of those interred were probably humble tenants on royal estates or labourers on the city-land, a status appropriate to their low standard of living, revealed by their high mortality before the age of 20. After the rebellion of 115-117 the town of Hadrianopolis was founded in the coastal plain to west of Teucheira. This means that much of the area remained vacant for settlement, a fact which points to a large Jewish population in the same region before the rising.
We may now sum up the information on the Jews of Teucheira that has been derived from their tombs.
The Jews constituted a considerable part of the city’s inhabitants. One section of them evidently reached the town from Egypt, but possibly a group came as emigrants from Judaea in the 2nd century B.C., and appear to have become assimilated to Greek society. The community included Roman citizens and freed slaves, also military settlers or their descendants, and it may be deduced that a number were engaged in cultivation near the city. They possessed particular links, political and social, with the Ptolemaic regime. Their standard of living, at least in the 1st century A.D., was low, and their deathrate up to the age of 20 shocking, although in this respect their lot was probably no different from that of the gentiles. The sizes of their families did not exceed those usual in the times. A high percentage of the Jews possessed hellenized names, so that they are not recognizable as Jews by their names alone. A small group seems to have received a gymnasium education. On the other hand there is no evidence of a high level of Greek culture among most of them, and the suspicion of illiteracy attaches to some of them. Yet the names of one or two indicate an aspiration to hel-lenism on the part of their parents. The Jews of Teucheira probably had an organization, although their religious consciousness is hardly revealed before the destruction of the Temple, except by the Hebrew and theophoric names of some of them. They nevertheless included proselytes won over to Judaism by individual influence or by ownership of slaves. These included Libyans, and there was reciprocal influence, linguistic and perhaps not only linguistic, between them and the Jewish community.
Teucheira therefore furnishes the picture of a community which was certainly not wealthy, and was, in part, poor; which lived a life of hard manual labour as soldiers and cultivators, was influenced not a little both by its Greek environment and by its contact with the Libyan population, yet still preserved its adherence to Judaism.
4. Berenice
The discoveries at the city of Berenice, today Bengazi in the west of Cyrenaica, reveal a different picture. This city, one of the five towns of the Pentapolis,[921] formerly Euesperitae, was transferred, as we have stated, to the vicinity of the present port at the latest by the middle of the 3rd century B.C. It is to be assumed that from that time, if not earlier, a Jewish community existed in the city. It probably contained many poor members and people of humble means, but the three Jewish inscriptions found at Bengazi inform us of a comfortable and even wealthy stratum which constituted the leadership of the community.
The first inscription was found two centuries ago, but was not read rightly, being the most fragmentary and mutilated of the three documents. It has been restudied in recent years,[922] when its Jewish character was established, and its contents throw light on a number of points in the second inscription. It belongs to the years 8-6 B.C., being a resolution of the Jewish archontes (ἄρχοντες) and the politeuma (πολίτευμα) of the city — meaning, of the wardens of the organized community, and of the community itself — to express their thanks and esteem to one Decmus Valerius Dionysius for his services to the community, in so far as he had plastered and adorned the amphitheatre. The community resolves to set up a stele in the amphitheatre in his honour, to free him from liturgies and to crown him publicly at every monthly gathering.[923] The archons, to the extent that their names can be read, number seven, and it should be noted that the community imposed liturgies on its members (it may be assumed, on the richer families among them), i.e., the execution of projects on behalf of the community involving monetary expenditure.
The amphitheatre is mentioned also in the second inscription, which dates 30 years after the first, and in some measure clarifies the building’s character and identity. It shows that the building did not belong to the gentile city, but was a specifically Jewish structure, apparently designed for the community’s gatherings. This is made clear by the word used to describe the reconditioning of the edifice in the first inscription, viz. “a contribution to the politeuma” (ἐπίδομα τῶι πολιτεύματι).
The word ζωγράφειν used in the first inscription if of special interest, as it means “to paint”, more especially animal figures and even human beings; hence the building may have been adorned with wall-paintings and pictures like those to be seen at a later period in the synagogue of Dura-Europos. But the very existence of such a structure as an assembly hall of the Jewish community in a gentile city of the period is unique. We shall see presently, that there are two other contemporary Jewish buildings which perhaps belong to the same tradition.
The second Berenice inscription,[924] which is also the best-known, as it is complete, appears to have been incised in A.D. 24/25. It commemorates a resolution of the archons and politeuma of the Jews of Berenice, taken at the Festival of Tabernacles (Sukkot) the same year. The archontes now number nine, and the resolution honours the Roman official M. Tittius, who had been sent to Cyrene to look after “public affairs” (ἐπὶ τῶν δημοσίων πραγμάτων), for his courteous attitude both to the Greek citizens of the city and to the members of Jewish community. It is therefore resolved to set up a stele of white Parian marble in the amphitheatre in his honour, also to crown it and to praise the Roman publicly in the assemblies held on the sabbaths and at New Year.
918
Wright, summing up previous excavations, finds that all the tombs in the quarries to east of the town are Roman, but discovers earlier elements among those to west of it. His finding is appropriate to our own conclusion. It should be stressed that we see the epitaphs of the eastern sector as representing the generation of Teucheira Jews of the Roman period, but not the first generation of their community, which belonged to the hellenistic period.
919
On the term “Macedonian” in Ptolemaic Egypt, see Tcherikover,
920
Cf. Wright on Teucheira (
921
The name “Pentapolis” does not appear before the 1st century BC, when Pliny (
923
An honorary inscription closely akin to the present tablet in language and circumstances is