ANCIENT JEWISH CEMETERIES. — The typical Jewish sepulchre in Palestine is that hewn from the rock with a burial chamber whose entrance was closed by a large fitted stone, of the kind belonging to Joseph of Arimathea, in which the Redeemer was laid.
In Egypt, at Alexandria, two entire districts out of five were so densely populated by Jews as to be called Jewish quarters (Philo, In Flaccum, 8, 55). And yet how many Jewish cemeteries have been found above ground?
At Bologna the bodies of the martyrs Vitalis and Agricola were deposited in a Jewish cemetery, yet to this day no Jewish funerary inscription reputed to have been discovered in Bologna is known.
The Jewish community of Rome, both according to the judgment of Frey (Les communautés juives à Rome aux premiers temps de l'Église, in Recherches de science religieuse, 20 [1930], pp. 269–97) and more recently of S. Collon (Remarques sur les quartiers juifs de la Rome antique, in Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire, 57 [1940], pp. 72–94), was already firmly established by the mid-second century BCE; but so far no funerary inscription is known—not from that period, nor from the following Republican or Augustan age.
By the first half of the third century the Jewish community of Rome had at least thirteen synagogues; the districts most inhabited by them were Trastevere and the Subura.
What were their cemeteries? For in their funerary epigraphy the greeting “elphyn ἢ χαλικησίας σου ονειρο αυτου ο αυτης” is continuous. Perhaps at Rome the Jews did not immediately have separate burials from those of the pagans; Civitavecchia (v.), for example, a Jewish tomb was found amid the Roman cemetery.
The first time a subterranean Jewish cemetery was discovered at Rome was in the year 1602, through the work of A. Bosio on the Via Portuense at Monteverde in the locality then called Colle Rosaro; but by that time it was already damaged. It was brought to light again in 1905 in much worse condition and explored by N. Müller (Le catacombe degli antichi Ebrei poste nella via Portuense, in Dissertazioni della Pont. accad. rom. di Archeol., 2a serie, 12 [1915], pp. 205–318).
The cemetery was in such poor condition that the epigraphic material and furnishings had to be removed and donated by the owner to the Lateran Museum. The inscriptions were re-examined (N. Müller, Die Inschriften der jüdischen Katakomben am Monteverde zu Rom; nach des Verfassers Tode vervollständigt und herausgegeben von Dr. N. A. Bees, Leipzig 1919). More recently they have been collected (nos. 290–493) by J. B. Frey in his Corpus inscriptionum Judaicarum. Recueil des inscriptions juives qui vont du IIIe siècle avant Jésus-Christ au VIIe de notre ère, I, Europe, Vatican City 1936. Frey’s datings, however, are far from acceptable (v. CIMITERI CRISTIANI and the observations of A. Ferrara in Civ. Catt., 1936, III, pp. 461–73; IV, pp. 127–37, 298–311). The cemetery was in use until the fourth century, as attested by some stamped oil lamps and a few terracotta lamps bearing the monogram X.
The second Jewish cemetery discovered was that in the Randanini vineyard on the Via Appia, illustrated by R. Garrucci (C. degli antichi Ebrei scoperto recentemente in vigna Randanini, Rome 1862); conjoined with it are two pagan cubicles dating no later than the third century CE. Part of the cemetery toward the present Via Appia Pignatelli is open-air, and there Garrucci and others believed they could recognize in the ruins the remains of a synagogue. The inscriptions in the aforementioned Corpus of Frey run from no. 81 to 276.
A third, less extensive subterranean cemetery, also much damaged, was identified on the Via Labicana by O. Marucchi (Di un nuovo c. giudicio scoperto sulla via Labicana, in Dissertazioni della Pont. accad. rom. di Archeol., 2a serie, 2 [1884], pp. 497–538). The inscriptions in Frey’s Corpus are nos. 73–77.
In 1886 N. Müller illustrated Le catacombe degli Ebrei presso la via Appia Pignatelli (in Mitteilungen des deutschen archäol. Instituts, 1 [1886], pp. 49–56; J. B. Frey, op. cit., nos. 79, 80 and 283).
Other Jewish tombs were found in the ancient vineyard Cimarra on the Ardeatine (J. B. Frey, op. cit., nos. 277–81).
In November 1919 a new subterranean Jewish cemetery was accidentally discovered in the Villa Torlonia on the Via Nomentana. It consists of two originally independent parts. The older, at a higher level, dates to the third century; the other is at a lower level. In the first, a cubicle has its vault and walls decorated with the seven-branched candelabrum, the etrog, the lulav, the shofar, the scroll of the Law, the ark, the circumcision knife, the oil flask, the mandrake, dolphins with tridents, lions, peacocks, birds, the sun, the moon, landscapes. Above a tomb the swastika is represented. The first report of the discovery was given by R. Paribeni (Catacomba giudaica sulla via Nomentana, in Notizie degli scavi di antichità, 1920, pp. 143–155), then by H. W. Beyer and H. Lietzmann, Die jüdische Katakombe der Villa Torlonia in Rom, Berlin–Leipzig 1930; the inscriptions are re-edited by Frey, op. cit., nos. 6–71.
Altogether about 500 inscriptions have been found in these cemeteries; most in Greek, others in Latin, very few in Hebrew. The marble slabs are generally smaller, originally occupying the center of the loculus, which was more often closed by masonry. The seven-branched candelabrum was also painted on a wall of the Portuense cemetery. F. Rieger holds that the seven-branched candelabrum and the symbolic objects of the Feast of Tabernacles (flask, horn, etc.) all have an eschatological meaning (Zu den Fresken in der jüdischen Katakombe der Villa Torlonia in Rom, in Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 43 [1943], pp. 216–18).
Outside Rome a subterranean cemetery was found at Venosa (R. Garrucci, C. e. a Venosa, in Civ. Catt., 12a serie, 1883, I, pp. 107–20; V. CASTIGLIONE (GABIT), Di alcune epigrafi del c. israelitico di Venosa, in Bull. della Comm. archeol. comunale, 37 [1909], pp. 82–96; J. B. Frey, op. cit., nos. 569–619). Another notable group of Jewish funerary inscriptions comes from Taranto (J. B. Frey, op. cit., nos. 620–31).
In other cities one can speak less of true cemeteries than of funerary inscriptions; it will suffice to note where they are most numerous: Naples and Pompeii appear in Frey’s Corpus with 6 inscriptions; Syracuse with 3, as does Elche in Spain; Sant’Antioco in Sardinia with 4; on the Cimmerian Bosporus, Ponticapaea with 9; in Thessaly, Larissa with 12; in Phocis, Delphi with 3; in Attica, Athens with 4; in the Archipelago, Delos with 7. In Africa, at Carthage a Jewish necropolis was discovered by Delattre (Gamart ou la nécropole juive de Carthage, Lyon 1893); at Setif an inscription records a pater synagogae (CIL, VIII, 8499); in Pontus at Amisus (cf. W. Schultze, Altchristliche Städte und Landschaften, II, Kleinasien, Gütersloh 1922, p. 163).