Читать онлайн "Jews and Greeks in ancient Cyrene" - Эпплбаум Шимон - RuLit

It is impossible to say whether a Jewish rural population remained in Cyrenaica at this time. But in so far as Jewish tenants or subtenants remained on the ager publicus, something might be learnt of their plight from evidence on the attitude of Trajan’s government to the Jewish tenants on the land of Eretz Yisrael. This can be derived from several Midrashim which relate to the predicament of Jewish tenants on confiscated land in Judaea in the same period.[1239] Vespasian had confiscated much of the country’s land at the end of the War of the Destruction.[1240] Much of this appears in the records as subject to holders who are called Matziqim (crp’S?3).[1241] who oppress and harass the Jewish cultivators. These are not conductores, or state lessees, since they can sell their holdings; it is clear from a Midrash[1242] that they included various elements from the Roman aristocracy to ex-soldiers, or their agents, who had received their lands in grant from the Emperor. Midrash Siphri de-bei-Rav[1243] surveys all the regions of the country in which these holders are active, writing inter alia: “and the Negev, meaning that He showed him the South enjoying its calm, then showed it to him again with Matziqim holding it... the City of Palms (Jericho)... unto Zoar, these are the Matziqim of Israel.” Midrash Tannaim speaks in similar language:[1244] “... the Negev... unto Zoar, where He showed him the place, Matzirei Yisrael (= Matziquei Yisrael)”.

The two extracts cited inform us that there were Matziqim in the northern Negev, or the Darom, also in Zoar at the south end of the Dead Sea. These midrashim are not later than the 2nd century of the common era, but the reference to lands at Zoar which are in the hands of Roman owners cannot precede Trajan’s annexation of the Province of Arabia in A.D. 106/7.[1245] It may therefore be deduced that Vespasian’s original policy towards Jewish cultivators in Judaea had not changed under Trajan twenty or thirty years later.

We have no actual evidence that Trajan discriminated against the Jews of the Diaspora before the revolt of 115, just as there is no information that his predecessors had done so as a result of events in Judaea, if we except the imposition of the Jewish tax. But in Cyrenaica in 73 an abnormal situation had developed. The wealthier Jews had been put to death and their property sequestrated, while the rest of the community had manifested signs of ferment and rebellion. And if in the process of the reorganization of tenures, which lasted down to Trajan’s reign, problems occurred involving Jewish tenants or their settlement, it is not hard to imagine what attitude they encountered on the part of the representatives of the imperial government.[1246]

In proportion as the outbreak of the Jewish rebellion draws nearer, the evidence diminishes which might throw light on the immediate circumstances of its outbreak.[1247] But since the Second World War archaeology has made one important contribution to an understanding of the general background. In 1949 the late Colonel J. Baradez published his important book on the Roman frontier-system of Numidia.[1248] containing details of his explorations by air-photography of a hitherto relatively unknown Roman fortified system. These fortifications surround the Aurez Mountains on the west and south; inscriptions evidence that they were first organized under Trajan or Hadrian,[1249] and the line is closely bound up with planned areas of cultivation and with installations for storage of runoff and its direction to the fields, in other words, with an extensive and systematic scheme of agricultural settlement. This undertaking may be interpreted to mean that its purpose was to pin down the nomadic tribes of Numidia, to settle them in fixed agriculture and thus to put an end permanently to their seasonal movement backward and forward between the desert fringes and the cultivated areas. The significance of this impressive undertaking is, that in the reign of Trajan the problem of the relation between the Libyan tribes inhabiting the desert borders and the permanently settled population of the Roman provinces of Africa had reached a crisis.

Another archaeological discovery illumines the darkness shrouding the outbreak of the rebellion. This is part of a clay lamp already alluded to (p. 194),[1250] found at Cyrene in the area east of the Acropolis and south of the Agora. Another similar example, also fragmentary, was subsequently found in the Agora itself, alongside the foundation of Temple E6.[1251] Less than half the first lamp remains, but this is sufficient to show that its diameter was as much as 9.3 cm. The lamp is covered with a burnished maroon slip, its upper face being surrounded by a moulding and an ovolo frieze; within this is figured a seven-branched candlestick (menorah), and to its right appears an unidentifiable object, possibly a palm-branch. The menorah evidently occupied only part of the face, and what filled the remainder of the surface can only be conjectured. The filhng hole must have been small. The type belongs to the second half of the ist century and to the 2nd century, A.D., and is one of the commonest in this period, being known in Asia Minor, Italy, Egypt, Africa, Gaul, Greece and Eretz Yisrael.[1252] The excavations carried out at Teucheira in 1954 proved that this type of lamp was also manufactured in Cyrenaica; the rubbish dump of a pottery kiln was found in the Jewish cemetery to the west of the town, and in this similar lamps had been fired, as shown by the presence of the same type.[1253] The figures on those found were chiefly pagan deities (Astarte, Ganymede, Erotes), also gladiators and an erotic scene; only one decorative motif, a rosette, could have been acceptable to Jews. A number of examples of this type are known from Cyrene,[1254] including one which had been spoilt in the firing,[1255] providing additional evidence of local manufacture. Similar lamps have been found at Gerasa in Transjordan, among remains of a potter’s workshop turning out lamps and figurines, the finds belonging in the main to the reign of Trajan.[1256] Of the examples of this type from Gerasa, numbers 134-6 included figures of pagan deities, and one bore the figure of the ram of Jupiter Ammon and palmleaves: the appearance of the ram proves that this lamp did not precede the transfer of the legion III Cyrenaica to the province of Arabia about the year 128.[1257]

All the above finds carried pagan decoration, and no other examples of the type are recorded to the best of my knowledge, with the figure of the menorah. All other known clay lamps bearing the menorah-symbol belong, on the view till recently accepted, to the late Roman or to the Byzantine period; they have been classified by Reifenberg,[1258] who dated them not earlier than the 3rd century A.D., the overwhelming majority of them being of the 4th century or later. (On new evidence from Judaea, see p. 240). It is further generally agreed that the menorah as a decorative motif in Jewish art does not precede the destruction of the Second Temple, and even if some exceptional cases are known,[1259] there is little doubt that it became common chiefly after the year 70. This is confirmed at Teucheira, where the latest datable Jewish tomb belongs to the year 94 (see pp. 154 sqq), and symbols are virtually lacking, only two examples of the menorah being known.[1260] This is precisely what we should expect in a cemetery most of whose burials belong to the period before 70, on the assumption that the menorah became common on graves after that year. The Cyrene lamps with menorah motif, therefore, were probably made after the Destruction, and obviously cannot be later than the years 115-117, when the country’s Jewish community was annihilated. If these deductions are correct, the present lamp-type is the oldest known which bears the figure of the menorah-symbol.