6 - Aberkios of Hierapolis (Koçhisar) and His Gravestone

Summary

The gravestone of Aberkios, erected at Koçhisar in the 190s, is ‘the queen of Christian inscriptions’. Its text is echoed on the gravestone of Alexander, son of Antonios, dated to 216, from Karadirek. The Aberkios stone is displayed in the Museo Pio Cristiano in the Vatican. The text is full of biblical allusion from the beginning, and it draws on the Sibylline Oracles to liken Rome to Babylon, ‘for golden throne and golden sandal famed’. Other Christian inscriptions of early (i.e. second-century) date are comparable. Stephen Mitchell has recently argued for an early date for a number of Christian inscriptions from the Çarşamba Valley, south of Iconium. Gravestones of officials from the imperial palace in Rome form an intriguing parallel, because in the second century Rome and Isauria/Phrygia seem to have been the only regions where it was sometimes possible to make the Christian identity of the deceased clear on a gravestone. As well as a journey to Rome, the Aberkios epitaph narrates Aberkios’ journey across Syria to Nisibis. The costs of this journey and its symbolic value are discussed: it formed part of a campaign of controversy against the Montanist church.