The limitations of the evidence

Several limitations confront us when considering the sarcophagi of Jewish patrons from Beth She’arim and Rome. The first limitation has to do with gaps in the

archaeological record. The relatively small number of examples from both of these communities begs the question of how representative the corpus is. It seems likely that many important examples of sarcophagi belonging to Jewish patrons are absent from the corpuses for one of any number of reasons. Most prominently of course, is the

possibility that a great many sarcophagi were lost over the intervening years through the actions of looters, ancient and modern.122

Indeed, like many other large necropoleis of the ancient world, the Jewish catacombs at both Beth She’arim and Rome show clear evidence of extensive looting, a fact noted

122 _{Sarcophagi, and particularly the visual programs on them, were prized among antiquity collectors in the}

early days of archaeology, and the sight of whole sarcophagi being used as fountains and planters, and sarcophagi fragments embedded into the walls of church buildings, is still common in modern Rome. Marble sarcophagi were also prized for their potential to be kiln fired and rendered into lime potash. On this last use, see Rutgers 1995, 77.

by most of the original excavators of the sites.123 _{It is probable then that we have lost not}

only a sizable number of sarcophagi belonging to Jewish patrons to looting, but also many of the best examples. Such factors may skew analysis of the corpus in a number of ways, from distorting the statistics on sarcophagus adoption and popularity among Jewish patrons, to privileging certain types of visual programs chosen by Jewish patrons. The reality of catacomb looting, which seems disproportionately to have affected sarcophagi, has a sobering and cautionary effect on any approach to the data. Still, despite the indiscernible and unquantifiable impact of looting, we will see that the visual vocabulary of sarcophagi from Beth She’arim and Rome is an astoundingly diverse one. Even if it doesn’t capture the full range of possibilities enjoyed by Jewish sarcophagus patrons, must come close.

Another limitation concerns the difficulties inherent in ascribing intentionality to any kind of past practice from the vantage point of the present. It would be easy if we could assume that all past practices were the result of deliberate choices by individuals. Unfortunately, this cannot possibly be the case. The vast majority of practices, then as now, must have been carried out in an unthinking, habitual sort of way,124 _{and there are}

good reasons to be skeptical of the amount of choice exercised by an individual sarcophagus patron. For example, choice is often constrained on a practical and

123 _{Avigad (1976a), for instance, suggests that an entire chapter could be devoted to the archaeology of}

looting in Catacomb 20.

commercial level by availability.125 _{Cooper, for instance, has made a convincing case that}

when it came to the adoption of Roman pottery, factors like “availability and

convenience” were more critical to the adoption of ‘Roman culture’ in the provinces “than any allegiance to the (assumed) social symbolism of material culture like pottery.”126

For this reason, I devote some time in the coming chapters to reconstructing the Roman sarcophagus economy, in order to illustrate that there was significant potential for agency on the part of sarcophagus patrons. The case for generally passive

consumption on the basis of factors like ‘availability and convenience’ is much less convincing when it comes to the sarcophagus industry for a number of reasons. As sarcophagi were expensive objects, acquiring a sarcophagus in the first place represents a deliberate, and meaningful, choice. Furthermore, we see that even at a provincial necropolis like Beth She’arim, a wide variety of options available to local patrons, including even sarcophagi imported from production centers in Greece and Asia Minor (see Chapter 6). Moreover, while the evidence suggests that throughout the Roman world sarcophagi were most often purchased from stock with sculptural programs that were partially or completely pre-carved, we will see that patrons at Beth She'arim and Rome still had the choice of a variety of different visual programs to select from, not to mention the possibility of customizing aspects of even stock sarcophagi.

125 See Gardner 2007, 91.

There are also good reasons to suggest that sarcophagi and the patronage practices surrounding them were a great deal more deliberately self-representative than those related to other groups of cultural artifacts, including pottery. Neither the commission nor the viewing of sarcophagi was a daily practice, rather, they were unique events that were occasioned by death and certain memorials. It is often suggested that practices surrounding death and burial were more intentional than the habitual practices of daily life. Many of the rituals and practices associated with death were deliberately

commemorative and their affective aspect was heightened by the unusual

circumstances. Furthermore, it is widely accepted that sarcophagi were seen by many ancient patrons as a means of telling ‘self-narratives.’127 _{As we have seen, the telling of}

‘self-narratives’ is furthermore a fundamental part of social practice theory which attributes a relatively high degree of intentionality to the construction of identities.

We also know that in the Roman world the deceased themselves often played a direct role in their own funeral arrangements, either through the directing of a will,128 _or

127 _{Speaking of funerary inscriptions, Carroll (2011, 135) emphasizes not only the intentionality implicit in}

the commissioning of a text, but speculates also on the motivations underlying the choices:“… they were intentionally chosen by the deceased or those close to the deceased to negotiate and display status and to commemorate a network of personal relationships the dead enjoyed. What was or was not included in the epitaph reflected an intentional and manipulative selection of details and information to make the life of the deceased visible and memorable…” Woolf (1996) put it similarly and more succinctly when he wrote that “epigraphy provided a device by which individuals could write their public identities into history.”

128 _{On Roman wills, see Carroll 2006, 40-4; Noy 2011, 6-7. The will, and the elaborate lengths to which some}

Roman’s went to ensure proper memorialization, was satirized by Petronius in the dialogue that serves as the beginning of the end of Trimalchio’s banquet. Trimalchio describes to a stone-cutter Habinnas at some length the elaborate imagery he expects to be carved on his funerary monument, as well as his inscription— full of self-importance. His comic levels of pretension are timeless, but his sentiment that “Valde enim falsum

est vivo quidem domos cultas esse, non curari eas, ubi diutius nobis habitandum est” must have hit home for much

more directly through the overseeing of funerary arrangements, including the commissioning of a sarcophagus. There is extensive evidence, both literary and epigraphic, to indicate that many Romans took an active hand in arranging their funerals and funerary monuments.129 Such an event is even depicted on a panel from a

funerary altar in Rome (Fig. 1.3).130 _{Yet, it must also be acknowledged that the advanced}

planning of funerary rituals and monuments, including sarcophagi, required not just farsightedness, but also a certain level of economic means.131 _{It should probably be}

associated with only the most elaborate commissions.

In some ways, moreover, the issue of intentionality and ‘deliberate’ choice may be a moot point. All practices have significance. Structuration theory, for example, points out that practices don’t have to be deliberate in order to be meaningful, but that even

habitual, unthinking practice, which in reality, forms the bulk of the material of a life, are meaningful also. In fact, Gardner suggests that it was “precisely through doing such mundane activities as wearing particular items of dress, or dumping rubbish in a certain way, that the relationships between individual people and the social groups and

institutions of which they are a part actually become manifest.” Gardner notes that the

expense as well, such as Lucian, who wrote a whole tract on grief and funerary practices, De Luctu Adopting the rhetoric of cynicism, Lucian criticizes Trimalchio’s notion that the dead would care about their earthly remains. Calling such displays “foolish”, he writes: λοιπὸν οὖν ἐστιν αὐτὸν τῶν παρόντων ἕνεκα ταῦτα ληρεῖν οὔθ᾽ ὅ τι πέπονθεν αὐτῷ ὁ παῖς εἰδότα οὔθ᾽ ὅποι κεχώρηκε (De Luctu 14-19). For further discussion of these sources, see Carroll 2006, 40; Noy 2011.

129 _{Including details both large and small, from the dimensions of the monument to the type of marble it}

used. See Carroll 2006, 86-8, 105.

130 Carroll 2006, 105; D'Ambra 1998, 94.

patterns of the past will sometimes “result from habitual action; at other times they will have been discursively noticed in the past.”132 _{As humans, “we are always engaging in a}

mixture of habitual and discursive action.”133 _{We are making meaning whether we do it}

intentionally or not. Thus, whether or not we can separate out the deliberate choices from the quotidian and unthinking practice might matter a great deal less than it seems at first glance.

A final limitation concerns how representative the sarcophagi are for the broader study of Jewish culture in the period; whether the insights gained through their analysis pertain only to a small subset of ancient Jews—those who purchased and used

sarcophagi—or more broadly to the historical experience of Jewish communities in the Roman world. The majority of Jewish deceased throughout antiquity were buried in simple pit graves, and sarcophagus burial was practiced only by a very small proportion of the population over the course of roughly three centuries, from the 2nd _{to 5}th _centuries

C.E. Thus, the answer to this question rests on our identification of sarcophagus patrons, which we will consider in the following chapter. However, it must be emphasized that all signs indicate that the Jewish patrons of sarcophagi at both Beth She'arim and Rome were among the most elite members of their community. The same is true more broadly of sarcophagus patrons across the Roman world. Any careful analysis of the evidence

132 Gardner 2007, 130.

will take this into account, and avoid drawing broader conclusions about Jewish

experiences of the Roman world based on the evidence of a small and elite subset of this population.