Just appeared in print Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae (CIIP), volume 1, part 1 (nos. 1-704). #

A multi-lingual corpus of the inscriptions from Alexander to Muhammad, edited by Hannah M. Cotton, Leah di Segni, Werner Eck, Benjamin Isaac, Alla Kushnir-Stein, Haggai Misgav, Jonathan Price, Israel Roll and Ada Yardeni, with contributions by Eran Lupu and with the assistance of Marfa Heimbach and Naomi Schneider. This is the first comprehensive multi-lingual edition of inscriptions (in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic dialects, proto-Arabic, Armenian and Georgian) ever to be produced. It includes all the inscriptions, both published and unpublished, from the fourth century BCE to the seventh century CE, from the territory of present-day Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The project has been under way since 1999 in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Cologne, and has received the support of GIF, ISF, DFG and the President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

From the Preface: “Modern sensitivity to the claims of social and cultural varieties - often defined by and expressed in language and script - in one and the same country, was bound to transform our perception of Graeco-Roman antiquity. It is evident now (and was realised imperfectly in the past in the case of bilingual and trilingual texts) that the richness of the epigraphic tradition can be appreciated only when conventional restrictions are removed, and epigraphic texts in different languages, the contemporaneous expressions of different but related cultures, are studied and presented together. Furthermore, in the case of the Near East in general and of the territories of present-day Israel and the Palestinian Authority in particular - as the many surviving written documents attest - the local languages and cultures pre-dating the arrival of the Greeks and Romans proved more tenacious and potent, and remained more vital and vibrant, than elsewhere in the Graeco-Roman world”.