The military edict of the emperor Anastasios I from al-Hallabat. Archaeological investigations for the epigraph restitution of a Byzantine administrative text of the 5./6. cent. A.D. from Jordan

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Detlev Kreikenbom
• Subject Area: Classical, Roman, Christian and Islamic Archaeology
• Term: from 2015 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 283098272

It is the aim to reconstruct an epigraph of high historic value. It should regulate the border protection of the Byzantine empire in the Middle East. Important problems concerning the restitution of textual gaps must be resolved as well as the manner of the inscriptions visibility at an architectural structure in Umm id-Djimal on which the inscription has been displayed until its destruction by the earthquake of 551 AD. It concerns basic research for a philological and historical analysis of the material. The cooperation partner Denis Feissel (Paris), the philological scholar dealing with this inscription, got acquainted with the site of provenance only by a short stay at Jordan in December 2013. For this reason, he strongly relies on the cooperation with an archaeologist knowing the place. A large number of inscriptional ashlars had been re-cut along their borders by the masons for their recycling as spoils in the Qasr al-Hallabat. For this reason, the flow of the text is interrupted at many points. An additional problem is due to the fact, that some of the measure data documented by the American epigraphists or by the bequest of the late Marcillet-Jaubert proved to be wrong. The resulting textual lacunae and distortions can only be corrected by a precise re-measurement of letters and their distances on the original blocks. Basing on exact casts considerable portions of the text in section I (part 1, lines 1-101) have been already firmly retrieved. By the thorough examination of the surfaces in the vertical joints of the inscription blocks it was further stated that the inscription was intersected on the original building of display by a window or a doorway. Such specific investigations in three dimensions cannot be undertaken on the basis of photographs. Only exact casts of the original inscription blocks which are dispersed today over different locations may lead in their assemblage to conclusive results by comparative study in three dimensions. In order to examine Sections I (part 2, lines 102-136) and II by the described method, 30 blocks need to be copied by silicon moulds and casts. The intended examination of three dump heaps which were carelessly accumulated in 2006 by bulldozing, may produce further not yet known blocks and adjoining fragments.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France, Jordan
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Denis Feissel; Professor Dr. Thomas M. Weber