Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
The inscriptions published here for the first time were discovered in the course of a visit to Edessa, the modern Urfa, during the summer of 1956. My journey was made possible by generous subventions from the Central Research Funds of the University of London and the Pilgrim Trust Fund administered by the British Academy. It is a pleasure to express here my gratitude not only to those bodies, but also to the officials of the Turkish Department of Antiquities and to the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, whose ready co-operation greatly facilitated our work in the field; and my sincere thanks are due no less to the energy and perseverance of Dr. D. S. Rice and his assistants Dr. Donald Strong and Mr. Michael Ballance, my companions in the rigours of an Anatolian heat-wave.
1 The text of Clermont-Ganneau's mosaic should, I suggest, be deciphered as follows: Right side—line 1, b]yrh šbt, line 2, šn]t w, line 3, trtyn, (lines 4–6 are indecipherable), line 7, brt, line 8, left side—line 1, slmt (?), line 2, zyd…, line 3, , line 4, The translation is then, ‘In the month Shebat, in the year 92 (i.e. A.D. 280–1) … daughter of Portrait of ZYD …, wife of ’.