Page 54 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

JEWISH COMMUNITY 41

—the mosaic has been damaged—but one figure extends to him what must
be a cap of state of elegant shape. In the Family Portrait mosaic, two of the
three sons wear their hair elegantly waved; in much the same fashion, a
figure on a second century relief at Sumatar wears his hair uncovered, but
secured by a band, a bow and a loop at either side. The son next to the
central figure of the Family Portrait mosaic wears a Phrygian cap, a sign
perhaps that he is the eldest son. But the portly figure of the father is dis-
tinguished by a magnificent turban. It is the only turban of this sort in the
Edessan mosaics; the nearest we come to this fine head-gear is a hat of ostrich
or peacock feathers, on the relief of a funerary banquet at Kara Koprii near
Urfa. There is one allusion in literature to turbans at Edessa, and signifi-
cantly it occurs in a description of a pagan festival, two or three centuries
after this Family Portrait mosaic. We read there that the crowd celebrated the
occasion by going up 'to the theatre toward evening, clad in linen garments,
wearing turbans and with their loins ungirt'. That attention was paid to
head-gear by males also at Edessa will not surprise us. We have already
observed that the king wore a diadem with his tiara as token of his elevation
to the throne and that tiaras without a diadem were conferred on nobles as a
sign of rank.1
The people depicted in the mosaics and statues of Edessa were evidently
pagan. This is clear on negative grounds alone; in the inscriptions and decor
appears none of the formulae or the symbols which are obligatory in Chris-
tian and Jewish memorials.

The Jews of Edessa looked eastward to more powerful Jewish communi-
ties in north-eastern Mesopotamia. In Adiabene, the ruling family adopted
Judaism in the first century A.D. The story of Queen Helena of Adiabene and
her two sons was so widely current that nearly three centuries later the
biographies of another Queen Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine the
Great, were largely modelled on it. In the second century the Jews of Adia-
bene were still numerous. But the greatest Jewish community of this region
was at Nisibis. This was a stronghold in which Jews of northern Meso-
potamia took refuge in times of persecution, because, writes Josephus, 'the
inhabitants, who were many, were all warlike men'. Here were stored the
contributions of the Jews of this region to the Temple at Jerusalem. Here,
too, was the seat of a Jewish academy, whose fame spread not only to south
Mesopotamia, but also to Palestine; it is no accident that it was in the time
of the celebrated Rabbi Judah ben Bathyra of Nisibis, the first of that name
in the Talmud, that the kings of Adiabene became Jewish.
We have observed how close were the relations between Edessa, Nisibis,
Istanbul, and in the relief of a marble block which the only words that are certain are, 'Of
from Urfa which is at Istanbul too; see Pis. ija, our lord . . . revered ... of Shemeshgram'.
140. The latter carries a Syriac inscription of * See p. 18 above.

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