“On the seventh day of the month . . . in the thirty-first year of
the Lord of Kings, Ptolemæus, son of Ptolemæus . . . which was the
fifty-seventh year of the Citians, when Amarat-Osiri, daughter of . . .
son of Abd-Susim, of Gad’ath, was _canephora_ of Asinoë Philadelphus,
these statues were set up by Bathshalun, daughter of Maryichai, son
of Esmunadon, to the memory of his grandsons, Esmunadon, Shallum, and
Abd-Reseph, the three sons of Maryichai, son of Esmunadon, according to
the vow which their father, Maryichai, vowed, when he was still alive,
to their lord, Reseph-Mikal. May he bless them!”[1330]
There is a little more variety in the inscriptions on tombstones. The
great majority, indeed, are extremely curt and dry, containing scarcely
anything beyond the name of the person who is buried in the tomb,
or that together with the name of the person by whom the monument is
erected; e.g. “To Athad, the daughter of Abd-Esmun, the Suffes, and wife
of Ger-Melkarth, the son of Ben-hodesh, the son of Esmunazar”[1331];
or “This monument I, Menahem, grandson of Abd-Esmun, have erected to my
father, Abd-Shamash, son of Abd-Esmun”[1332]; or “I, Abd-Osiri, the son
of Abd-Susim, the son of Hur, have erected this monument, while I am
still alive, to myself, and to my wife, Ammat-Ashtoreth, daughter of
Taam, son of Abd-melek, [and have placed it] over the chamber of my
tomb, in perpetuity.”[1333] But, occasionally, we get a glimpse, beyond
the mere dry facts, into the region of thought; as where the erector of
a monument appends to the name of one, whom we may suppose to have been
a miser, the remark, that “the reward of him who heaps up riches is
contempt;”[1334] or where one who entertains the hope that his friend
is happier in another world than he was upon earth, thus expresses
himself--“In memory of Esmun. After rain, the sun shines forth;”[1335]
or, again, where domestic affection shows itself in the declaration
concerning the departed--“When he entered into the house that is so full
[of guests], there was grief for the memory of the sage, the man that
was hard as adamant, that bore calamities of every sort, that was
a widower through the death of my mother, that was like a pellucid
fountain, and had a name pure from crime. Erected in affection by me his
son to my father.”[1336]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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