Page 42 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

CULTURAL LIFE 29
Two methods were used for closing the entrance to the cave-tombs. One,
in S, ehitlik Mahallesi, has a rectangular stone slab swinging on an upper and
a lower hinge. It was closed from the outside by means of a chain which
drew a bar across into a socket in the jamb of the door; it was evidently
opened by inserting through the 'letter box' of the door the bar which had
grooves corresponding to those of a socket in the jamb. More frequently,
however, a flat circular stone 'door' was man-handled across the opening,
and housed in a recess outside the entrance when the tomb was open.1
While these cave-tombs were the usual place of burial, some wealthy
Edessans buried their dead in a tomb tower, Syriac naphsha; a sepulchre of
this type was erected, we have already observed, for the members of the
Aryu dynasty in A.D. 88-9. Several tomb towers are found at Kasr al-
Banat and elsewhere in the Tektek mountains, some eighty kilometres from
Urfa, and reference has been made to the tomb tower with an inscription at
Serrin on the bank of the Euphrates.2 None, however, has survived at Urfa
itself. The nearest tomb tower to the city, which still stands, is that at Deyr
Yakup in the bare hills about seven or eight kilometres to the south. Here,
high in a wall, is a reclining figure; probably—for the stone is too weather-
beaten to allow us to distinguish the details clearly—the figure has the high
head-dress of a priest or noble,3 and his head rests on a cushion. Nearby,
over the entrance to the upper storey of the tomb tower, is found a bilingual
inscription in Greek and a script resembling Palmyrene, and another in-
scription wholly in the near-Palmyrene script;4 these texts have been assig-
ned, on the basis of the writing, to the second century. At one time, there
must have been more towers at this place, since a monastery which had the
Syriac name naphshatha, 'the tomb towers', was established here in the
sixth century. Its pagan associations are indicated by a chronicle of, probably,
the Islamic period, stating that the monastery stood 'in the midst of the hills
where there is a great pagan altar standing to this day'.5

The inscriptions in a near-Palmyrene script at Deyr Yakup underline the
close relations that must have existed, in the time of the monarchy, between

constructed, then, in A.D. 208-9. In this ceme- son and of all of them'. This text may, on
tery was found the only example so far dis- grounds of script, be assigned to the third
covered at Urfa of a tomb to which access is century. On inscriptions at Urfa see the articles
gained through a vertical shaft. It has arcosolia in BSOAS by the present writer and the
on each side below ground, and was roofed bibliographies there.
over by a large stone slab or slabs. Two Syriac * Pis. zia, zza.
inscriptions beside the tomb are too fragmen- 2 See p. 23 above.
tary to be read; on one may be the word, 3 See the photograph (here published for the
'[s]isters". On a third inscription we read: 'This first time) at PI. 396.
is the grave of John the Govfernor], son of 4 Both inscriptions at Deyr Yakup state
Theophylactos, sh[ared by] his spouse, daugh- simply: 'Amashshemesh wife of Shardu bar
ter of John, captain of the troops of the Greeks, Ma'nu*; PI. 306.
and [this is the grave] of Theophylactos their s Cf. p. 105 below and PI. 390.

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