The bilingual ostracon from el-KōmCalendar assimilation was a complex process in which the separate identity of
the calendars—Macedonian and Babylonian—never completely faded. A good
example of this complexity, from the early Seleucid period, appears in epi-
graphic evidence from just outside the Seleucid Empire: the bilingual ostracon
from Khirbet el-Kōm (Idumaea, southern Palestine), dated 12 Tammuz in
Aramaic and 12 Panemos in Greek. Both sections are dated‘year 6’; since this
ostracon belongs, on ceramic and palaeographic grounds, to the early third
centuryBCE,‘year 6’can only be that of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, i.e. 280BCE,
when Idumaea was under Ptolemaic rule.^28
Atfirst sight, this double date is trivial; but unlike the sources analyzed
above (e.g. in Ptolemy’sAlmagest), it is not merely a date with its translation in
another language. The Aramaic and Greek texts of this ostracon are not the
same (i.e. one is not translated from the another), but represent different
Quintilis, which in that year would have been equivalent to some time early in (Julian) May.
Assuming, as we should, that Artemisios was still a lunar month, a 23rd occurring not long
before early May in that year could only have beenc.16 April. The month of Artemisios would
therefore have coincided with Babylonian Nisan (which, assuming that the 19-year cycle was still
followed in Babylonia, began in that year on 25 March), exactly as according to the Seleucid
scheme (Table 5.2). The evidence is presented by Beaujeu (1976) 27–8; although he uses it,
contrariwise, to establish the dates of the pre-Julian Roman calendar on the basis of an assumed
identity of Artemisios with Nisan, there is sufficient independent evidence to support the
equivalence of 18 Quintilis and (Julian) early May in 47BCE, and thus to support my argument
(I am grateful to Chris Bennett for drawing my attention to this article). Although the chronolo-
gy of Malalas is confused in this context (he places Caesar’s visit to Antiochbeforehis campaign
in Egypt, and seems to date it to 48BCE, in thefirst indiction and year 1 of the Antiochene era;
moreover, he anachronistically identifies Artemisios with the Julian month of May), and in spite
of its suspicious similarity to the date of the foundation of Antioch in 300BCE(which was on 22
Artemisios, according to Malalas 8. 12 (13)), the date of 23 Artemisios is presumably drawn from
a local Antiochene tradition, and need not be treateda priorias unreliable.
(^28) Geraty (1975); an ostracon is a potsherd; el-Kōm lies between Hebron and Lakish. Geraty
dates the ostracon to 277BCE; however, Hazzard (1987) has since shown that year 6 of Philadel-
phus corresponds to 280/79BCE, and since the Macedonian year in Egypt began in this period in
Dystros (about seven months before the Egyptian New Year, 1 Thoth), the ostracon should be
dated to 280BCE(I am grateful to Chris Bennett for this correction). Other possibilities for‘year
6 ’can be excluded by elimination. It cannot be year 6 of the Seleucid Era (306BCE), because this
era was not in use (at least in Babylonia) before its 7th year (Oelsner 1974: 130, 139; Assar 2003:
175, 185 n. 13; but Geraty’s argument—that in year 6 SE, Seleucid control of Idumaea was under
Ptolemaic threat and therefore the Seleucid Era would not have been used—is far less convinc-
ing). Similarly, it cannot be year 6 of Ptolemy I Soter (299BCE, at which stage Idumaea had just
passed into Ptolemaic hands), because his regnal years were not yet in use in Egypt in this period
(Geraty loc. cit.). Geraty’s palaeographic dating to the early 3rd c. (rather than a pre-Ptolemaic
dating, e.g. to the 310sBCE, which would lead to a rather different interpretation of the ostracon’s
calendrical significance) is confirmed on the basis of more recently published ostraca from the
same region that arefirmly dated to the late 4th c.BCE(e.g. Eph’al and Naveh 1996): the script of
the el-Kōm ostraca looks somewhat more developed than that of the late-4th-c. ostraca, and
should therefore be dated to the 3rd c.BCE(Ada Yardeni, pers. comm.). This leaves us only with
280 BCE.
244 Calendars in Antiquity