What ancient graffiti reveals about the everyday lives of Jews in
the Greek and Roman world Few direct clues exist to the everyday
lives and beliefs of ordinary Jews in antiquity. Prevailing
perspectives on ancient Jewish life have been shaped largely by the
voices of intellectual and social elites, preserved in the writings
of Philo and Josephus and the rabbinic texts of the Mishnah and
Talmud. Commissioned art, architecture, and formal inscriptions
displayed on tombs and synagogues equally reflect the sensibilities
of their influential patrons. The perspectives and sentiments of
nonelite Jews, by contrast, have mostly disappeared from the
historical record. Focusing on these forgotten Jews of antiquity,
Writing on the Wall takes an unprecedented look at the vernacular
inscriptions and drawings they left behind and sheds new light on
the richness of their quotidian lives. Just like their neighbors
throughout the eastern and southern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia,
Arabia, and Egypt, ancient Jews scribbled and drew graffiti
everyplace--in and around markets, hippodromes, theaters, pagan
temples, open cliffs, sanctuaries, and even inside burial caves and
synagogues. Karen Stern reveals what these markings tell us about
the men and women who made them, people whose lives, beliefs, and
behaviors eluded commemoration in grand literary and architectural
works. Making compelling analogies with modern graffiti practices,
she documents the overlooked connections between Jews and their
neighbors, showing how popular Jewish practices of prayer, mortuary
commemoration, commerce, and civic engagement regularly crossed
ethnic and religious boundaries. Illustrated throughout with
examples of ancient graffiti, Writing on the Wall provides a
tantalizingly intimate glimpse into the cultural worlds of
forgotten populations living at the crossroads of Judaism,
Christianity, paganism, and earliest Islam.
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