My wife and I traveled to Israel in 2018, and were part of a small tour group while we were there. The size of the group is only important, perhaps, because it allowed us to spend much less time waiting for the rest of the group than a large group would. We had 19 people on a single bus. Friends of ours were on a tour with about 600 people on 14 buses. Although they were happy with their choice, the time spent waiting was a “con”.
One stop on our tour was Caesarea Maritima, which was essentially the Roman capital of Israel during the time of Jesus. Back in 1961, a block of carved limestone was discovered there, which contains an inscription regarding Pontius Pilate, widely known as the Roman official who ordered the crucifixion of Jesus, and had “King of the Jews” posted on the cross as his offense. In any case, the block is called the Pilate Stone, and a copy is on display in the ruins there in Caesarea Maritima.
Photo by Jamie Harre.
You can look up the details on Wikipedia under Pilate Stone, instead of me plagiarizing the article, here. But I noticed that the article never mentions the word “epigraphic”, which relates to the study of epigraphs, or inscriptions. Why is that important? I thought it was the best chance I had of seeing the word in use in something to which I could relate. Epigraphic is my random word of the day, and I was hoping I could see it used in context, rather than just in a definition.
In fact, I didn’t find any colleges that offered the major (apologies if I just didn’t search hard/smart enough). I’m not even sure I found any colleges in the US that offered a single course dedicated to it. But if they do, it would be in the department of classics, or something similar, and probably focuses on Greek and/or Latin. It makes sense that the actual language of the epigraph would matter, I guess.
In the Pilate Stone article, all credit for discovering and interpreting the stone is given to “archaeologists”, who would probably have been trained in epigraphy, if they found a school that offered the training. Coincidentally, the Pilate Stone was discovered in June, 1961, but I was too busy being born to have noticed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigraphy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilate_stone
Random Word of the Week 