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Investigations at “Julianos' Church” at Umm-el-Jemal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

G. U. S. Corbett  and
J. M. Reynolds
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Extract

The main object of the expedition to Umm-el-Jemal, which was financed by the Walker Trust and sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, in the summer of 1956, was to re-examine the evidence for the history of a church building which had been discovered and summarily surveyed by Professor H. C. Butler and the Princeton University Archaeological Expedition to Syria in the years 1904–1905. This was the church which the Princeton expedition named after a certain Julianos and dated to the year A.D. 344 on the basis of an inscription which they found lying in the ruins and which they associated (mistakenly, as it now seems) with the foundation of the church.

Of the hundreds of church buildings which must have been constructed during the first half of the fourth century, very few are known to us, and a church with a recognisable plan and so early a date is a matter of considerable consequence in the study of the development of church architecture. It therefore seemed well worth while to make a special visit to the site of Julianos' church to verify the facts published by the Princeton Expedition; especially as their survey was a rather summary one and seemed, when the writer visited the site in 1953, to be mistaken in more than one important respect.

Type
Research Article
Information
Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 25 , November 1957 , pp. 39 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1957

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References

1 The writer would like to thank the Trustees of The Walker Trust for the grant which made the expedition possible, and also contributed to the cost of publication. He also thanks the Director of The British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem for sponsoring the expedition and for much valuable help. He is also deeply indebted to Mr. G. Lankester Harding, formerly Director of Antiquities in Jordan, for permission to undertake the work, and to Mr. Yusef Sa'ad, Secretary of the Palestine Archaeological Museum, whose assistance was invaluable.

The party was a small one, consisting only of three Europeans. About a dozen Arabs from the family which lives near the site were employed in clearing fallen masonry. Work started on 16 July and ended on 10 August.

2 Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expedition to Syria in 1904–5, Division II, Ancient Architecture in Syria, Section A, Southern Syria, pp. 173–176.

Also Ibid., Division III, Greek and Latin Inscriptions, No. 262. Henceforward referred to as “Princeton, II and III.”

3 A good general impression of the town can be obtained from the air-photographs published by G. Horsfield in Antiquity, 1937, pp. 456–460.

4 Princeton, II, A, p. 159.

5 Ibid., pp. 67–70.

6 Ibid., p. 68.

7 Ibid., p. 195.

8 Map no. 2 in Princeton II, A, identifies the same house as no. XI.

9 Princeton, II, A, Illustration 147 on p. 175.

10 Princeton, IV, A, no. 42.

11 An inscription on one of the stones (Princeton, III, no. 236) must have been hidden by the plaster Presumably it is a re-used stone.

12 In the drawing of the church published by the Princeton Expedition these two arches are mistakenly interchanged (cf. Princeton, II, A, Illustration 147 on p. 175).

13 Dyggve; Recherches à Salone, p. 185, fig. 244.

14 Romanelli; Atti del IV Congresso di Archeologia Cristiana (Vatican, 1938), Vol. I, p. 277Google Scholar.

15 Cecchelli, , in La Basilica di Aquileia (Bologna, 1933), p. 155Google Scholar, cit. Gnirs; Jahrbuch d. kunsthist. Inst., 1915, p. 44.

16 Princeton, II, A, p. 155.

17 This is the memorial of Julianos, weighed down with long sleep, for whom Agathus his father built it, shedding a tear, hard by the bounds of the public cemetery of the people of Christ, to the end that the better folk might for ever sing his praises publicly, as being aforetime a trusty son to Agathus, the presbyter, and well beloved, being twelve years old. In the year 239” (A.D. 344)—Princeton, III, no. 262.

18 Princeton, II, A, pp. 172–173.

19 Jean Lassus, Les Sanctuaires Chrétiens de Syrie, p. 26.

20 Ibid., p. 191.

21 Below, p. 65.

22 Princeton, III, no. 603 and dated inscriptions listed on p. 485.

23 Ibid., nos. 717, 800 and 797(3) respectively.

24 Ibid., nos. 1074, 1093, 1075, 1091, 1201 and 1199, respectively.

25 Princeton, III, nos. 236 and 262.

26 For the scutarii see Pauly-Wissowa, Vol. II, A cols. 621–624.

27 The title of a military officer at this date is normally tribunus simply. Possibly MIA here is an uncancelled error of the cutter—an abandoned attempt at the word militante which follows.

28 See Pauly-Wissowa loc. cit. It seems to be generally held that the scutarii of this date were largely recruited in Germany.