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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2015
The slab of dark grey tufa bearing the text copied below was found last summer in the grounds of Petworth House; its origin and history, except as deducible from the stone itself, are unknown; for leave to publish it I am grateful to Lord and Lady Leconfield. The inscription is here drawn from a photograph kindly communicated by Mr. D. O. Malcolm and from notes and squeezes which Mr. S. E. Winbolt was good enough to take; Professor J. G. C. Anderson did me the favour to verify the reading.
The stone is broken on three sides, the top alone being undamaged; the rear surface, which is fairly smooth, seems also to have its ancient finish; height 0·56 m., width 1·04, thickness 0·12 to 0·155, height of the letters 0·03 to 0·35; width of the inscribed tablet 0·73. A vertical cleft has destroyed one or two letters in the middle of each line.
1 In reply to a question as to the dates of the early Christian objects in this country, Mr. R. G. Collingwood has kindly sent me the following note:
‘(1) Foreign objects brought from abroad in recent times (as this Petworth fragment no doubt was): This class of object, though very numerous, is one of which nobody has yet made a systematic study, and my own information on it is scrappy.
(2) British objects proper: There is not one single Christian object or inscription whose date is certain to within narrow limits. The Silchester church had no dating evidence; people vaguely, and admittedly without definite grounds, call it fourth century. The Caerwent church (Archaeologia, lxxx, 235) was built well after the part of the town where it stood had fallen into decay; it must have been quite late, perhaps even post-Roman. There is a very obscure probably Christian tombstone at Risingham (C.I.L. vii., 1021Google Scholar) which Haverfield dated 300–350 by its style (Archaeol. Aeliana, ser. 3, xv., 9). Another probably Christian tombstone from Carlisle, (Eph. epigr. ix., 1222Google Scholar) he dated to the fourth century (Arch. Ael. cit. p. 13). I do not think anyone would judge these dates too late for the objects. A fragment of a third similar stone at Brougham does not seem to me much earlier (Eph. epigr. iii., 91); it might conceivably be late third century, but I should think it is more likely fourth. None of these are explicitly Christian, and they are the only inscriptions of Roman date—I exclude post-Roman things—that are generally regarded as Christian. I think, therefore, it would be safe to say that the Petworth stone is earlier than any of the extant monuments of Romano-British Christianity. Whether there are in Great Britain earlier Christian monuments which have been brought from abroad by modern collectors I cannot say.’
2 If guessing were permissible, a likely spot for the export of this as of so many other antique marbles would be Cyzicus; two examples of the cryptic formula have been found there: Inscr. gr. chrét. d'A.M. 7, 8. It occurs also as far east as Philomelium, ; J.H.S. xviii., 1898, pp. 113, 344Google Scholar.