Funerary Law and the Protection of Graves in Greco-Roman Southwestern Asia Minor

After exploring the funerary inscriptions with legal content from western Asia Minor, namely from Mysia and the Troad, Ionia and Caria, in the preceding project, the same methods of analysis will now be applied to epitaphs from southwestern Asia Minor. Four regions will form the geographical scope of this project: Lycia, Pamphylia, the Cibyratis and Pisidia. It is from these regions that we have not only the most numerous and detailed texts, but also the earliest inscriptions concerning tomb protection. In these regions Greek texts date from as as early as the end of the 4th cent. BCE, while in western Asia Minor protection clauses for graves are not usually found any earlier than the 1st cent. CE. Epichoric Lycian texts predate the Greek inscriptions and date from the 5th and 4th cent. BCE. About one quarter of these inscriptions contain prohibitions as well as sanctions and curses threatening anybody who dared to act against the orders prescribed by the grave-owner. These orders usually contained prohibitions and sanctions against several forms of disturbing or damaging the grave in the broadest sense. Among the forbidden acts we find the interment of persons not entitled to burial on the site, be they members of the family excluded from the grave-site or strangers, as well as the opening of the grave for different purposes. Moreover the prohibition of alienation of the grave-site can be found often. The recipient of the fines was normally the city or one of its sanctuaries, in some cases also the Roman fiscus. In many instances the texts from Lycia prove to be the archetypes for the clauses used in the Ionian and Carian funerary texts. Moreover they provide a lot of information on the prosecution of the offence as well as on the exactment of the fines. The excellent state of the necropoleis in many places allowes the exploration of the material context surrounding our written sources. In the same way as in the previous project all the relevant inscriptions will first be analyzed city by city according to the different regions, bearing in mind that the area is organized in three different Roman provinces (Asia, Lycia et Pamphylia, Galatia).. Secondly a synopsis of the legally relevant elements will be presented.

Today, we expect a tomb stone to contain merely the names of the deceased and their life data. Thus, it is baffling to us that several thousand tomb inscriptions from Southwestern Asia Minor (Turkey) show detailed arrangements for the future burials in the tomb as well as sanctions, should these arrangements be disregarded. These texts are several lines long, were apparently drawn up by the tomb owner himself and explain in detail how the tomb is intended to be used whos supposed to be buried there and what consequences arise, should an unwanted action be taken (e.g. should someone try to sell the tomb or bury additional persons). Usually, the grave owner intends that a monetary fine should be paid in this case. These penalty clauses make up the legal part of the texts. One key question of the project was to determine which criteria contributed to the height of the monetary fine. They vary roughly between the amount of a couple of monthly salaries and several yearly salaries of a modern-day workerand exceed these numbers by far in some cases. So far, the scientific community expected the amounts to reflect the monetary inflation which can be noticed during the first three centuries of our era. In other words, the fines were expected to rise with time, so that they wont lose their deterring effect. In the course of the project, this theory turned out to be unsustainable. Instead, we discovered a correlation between the amount of the fine and the monumentality of the respective tomb: The bigger the building, the higher the fine. This observation enabled us to resolve the issue: The main criterion for the amount of the fine was the grave owners social status. The higher his position within the society of his hometown, the higher he set the monetary fine. This is sensible under the consideration that the sanctions (and thus the fines) were directed mainly towards later progeny of his own family (that would have the same social rank and the same financial possibilities as the grave owner). This discovery was a result of the socio-historical questions of the project, the main focus of which laid on the patterns of usage of the grave monuments in Asia Minor. The main aim was to determine whether the graves were designated exclusively for the grave owner and his immediate family (his wife, his children, perhaps also the grand-children) or if long-term use over several generations was intended. The texts from Termessos in Southern Pisidia for example showed that graves were supposed to be used only for one generation should the male children of the grave owner become family-men themselves, they were supposed to provide their own tomb as well. Following the same logic, female descendants were within the responsibility of their future husbands. These socio-historical aspects will continue to be in our research focus during a future research project, and thus contribute to our understanding of what constituted a grave family in ancient Asia Minor.