Hyrcania; Kh. Mird; el Mird - CASTELLION

Church/Monastery name: 
Hyrcania; Kh. Mird; el Mird - CASTELLION
Inscription number: 
1
Selected bibliography: 
25-26 (ed. pr.)
549-550
120, no. 142 (in Hebrew)
Abbreviation for Journals and Series
Epigraphical corpora: 

CIIP IV.1 (2018): 3209

Inscription type: 
dipinto
invocation/prayer
Location: 

On a fragment of wall plaster, found in an underground cavern at Khirbet Mird during the 1952-1953 excavations. According to Milik, the fragment, along with other Aramaic inscriptions, came from the walls of a church or a chapel, and presumably "demonstrate the existence at the convent of Kastellion of a group of monks using the Aramaean Syro-Palestinian dialect both in their daily life and for the divine office".

Physical description : 

Christian Palestinian Aramaic (CPA) inscription in black paint on a fragment of wall plaster. According to Bar-Asher, the three surviving words reported by Milik probably belonged to a longer text.

Text: 

מרא יסוס משיחא.

Translation: 

Lord Jesus Christ.

Commentary: 

Milik dates the Arabic, Greek and CPA findings of the cavern to "the 8th-10th centuries ... the golden age of the monastery of Mar Saba". Perrot dates the material based on litearary sources to the 6th-8th cent. Ben-Asher tentatively assigns the 8th cent.

Summary: 

Short CPA invocation of the Lord Jesus Christ painted in black on a fragment of wall plaster, found in an underground cavern at Khirbet Mird during the 1952-1953 excavations.