Twenty Years of Inscriptions

Abstract

Since 1968 the number of inscriptions newly found in Libya has been limited by the limited scale of excavations; but there has been some compensation from the results of surface surveys and from chance discoveries, especially in rural areas. Although the individual items are not necessarily stirring, they form, when taken together, a valuable base for study of the rural populations, at least within the city territories or near to the Roman forts.There has been, indeed, a steady stream of articles on inscriptions, or using inscriptions. Together with some new texts, they have presented many new readings and interpretations of ones previously published. In addition four small corpora have appeared: of the inscriptions of Apollonia (Reynolds 1976, 293–333), of Berenice (Reynolds 1977, 233–254), of the Jewish inhabitants of Cyrenaica (Lüderitz 1983), and of the Neo-Punic texts of Tripolitania known by 1967 (Levi della Vida and Amadasi Guzzo 1987).Another feature of the twenty years has been the intermittent publication of bibliographies of work in progress (Garbini 1974 (Neo-Punic), Gasperini and Paci 1975, Paci 1979 (Cyrenaica and Tripolitania), Reynolds 1972, 1980a (Cyrenaica), Le Glay 1974 (Tripolitania)). These, together with the running records produced approximately every year (L'Année Epigraphique, L'Année Philologique, Bulletin Epigraphique (in REG), SEG), obviate the need to do more here than note what seems to me to show best where the epigraphic contribution is leading us. The selection is inevitably much influenced by my current interests; it is not at all intended to suggest that what is omitted is lacking in importance.