Conceptions and Sources
Grossly inadequate as ouroften isolated fragments of inscriptional evi-
denceare,theyareoftenthebest(ortheonly)evidencewehavefortheuseof
alanguage,orthecontrastingusesofdifferentlanguages,inaparticulartime
and place. In western and central Europe, for instance, there is still noth-
ingtosuggestthatany‘‘native’’languagewaseverusedinpublicdocuments
in parallel with Latin,or indeed came into regular use in public inscribed
documentsseparatelyfromLatin.Itdoesnotofcoursefollowthatnonewas
spoken,orevenusedinwritingonperishablematerials.However,inTripoli-
taniainNorthAfrica,forinstance,neo-PunictextsaccompaniedLatinones
onpublicinscriptionsatleastuntiltheendofthefirstcentury..Butthe
excellentvolumeoftheInscriptions of Roman Tripolitania,byJ.M.Reynolds
andJ.B.WardPerkins(),merelyalludestobutdoesnotprintordiscuss
theseparalleltexts.
Thatthisshouldbesoisaproductbothoftheinevitablelimitationsof
humanknowledge,energy,andskillandofthecostsofprinting;theeffort
and expense of producing a volume of Latin and/or Greek inscriptions is
great enough without the extra problems presented byotherancient lan-
guagesandscripts.Yetitdoesdeserveemphasisthatthisrestriction,serious
enoughforourunderstandingofthelocalcultureofTripolitania,isamuch
morefundamentalhandicapwhenwecometotheevenrichermixtureof
culturesintheNearEast,wherewefindanumberofmajordocumentsin-
scribedfromthebeginninginparalleltextsintwoormorelanguages—and
wherethetextsindifferentlanguageshavetendedtobepublishedanddis-
cussedseparately.ThisisthecaseevenwiththeRosettastonefromEgypt,
adecreeoftheEgyptianpriesthoodpassedin..,andreproducedina
GreektextandtwoEgyptianones,writteninhieroglyphicanddemotic.The
GreektextisavailableasDittenberger,Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae,.
Butalthough,asiswellknown,itwastheparalleltextswhichenabledCham-
pollion to decipher the hieroglyphic script in the s, the threeversions
havesincethenveryrarelybeendiscussedwithinthesamecovers.
Egyptisperhapsthemostmarkedcasewheretheskillsnecessarytostudy
Greekinscriptions,papyri,andostraca(fragmentsofpotterywithwriting
inkedorscratchedonthem),ontheonehand,andEgyptianones,onthe
other,haveforunderstandablereasonsbeendeployedasifinseparatecom-
partments. But it may beworth noting three relatively recent discoveries
ofmajormultilingualtexts,whichservetoshowupboththepresentlimi-
tations of and the infinite possibilities of epigraphy in the Near East and
centralAsia.
.Thetrilingualinscription,inAramaic,Lycian,andGreek,fromXan-
thosinLycia,almostcertainlytobedatedto/..,thatis,inthelast