The Hellenistic World and Rome
region in the Hellenistic period, but as a strategic device whose purpose is
precisely to bring into sharper relief significant new items of evidence as
they appear. Firstly, to insist on the sparseness of evidence for the culture and
social structure of the region in the Achaemenid period, with the possible
exception of Judaea, and to a lesser extent Phoenicia, is to prevent the un-
conscious projection of general notions about ‘‘oriental’’ or ‘‘Near Eastern’’
civilisation on to this area. Secondly, to emphasise the limits of the empirical
data which we can actually use to give substance to the notion of ‘‘Helleni-
sation’’ or ‘‘Hellenism’’ in this particular time and place is both to call these
concepts into question and to insist on testing them, so far as possible, area
by area and period by period. Thirdly, the notion of a ‘‘fusion’’ of cultures is
doubly open to question if we have very little direct evidence for the nature
of either of the cultures concerned, let alone for the manner in which they
may have interacted, or occupied separate spheres. ‘‘Hellenisation’’ might, as
is often supposed, have extended very little outside the towns or the upper
classes. Yet as regards towns, or urban centres, there is enough evidence to
suggest that it was possible to absorb Greek culture without losing local tra-
ditions; and that Hierapolitans, Phoenicians, and Samaritans when abroad
positively emphasised their non-Greek identity.
Nor, by contrast, is it certain that country areas remote from the centres
of Greek or Macedonian settlement remained immune to Greek presence or
influence. This paper concludes with what seems to be (so far) the only formal
bilingual inscription, in Greek and Aramaic, dating to the Hellenistic period,
and discovered west of the Euphrates. This is a dedication from Tel Dan, first
published in a brief archaeological report and discussed by Horsley in one
of his valuable surveys of new material relevant to early Christianity.^105 The
site seems to have been a high place of the Israelite period (tenth–ninth cen-
turies..), on which further construction, possibly including an altar, sub-
sequently took place in the Hellenistic period. The inscription, carved on a
limestone slab, seems to date to the late third or early second century..
(BE, no. ). The Greek text, quite finely carved, presents no problems:
‘‘To the god who is in Dan Zoilos (offers) his vow’’ (theōi / tōi en Danois /
Zōiloseuchēn). Immediately underneath it comes an Aramaic text, more ama-
teurishly carved, of which just enough survives to show that the author, and
hence the date, is the same. It reads either [BD]N NDR ZYLS L’[LH’]—‘‘In
. A. Biran, ‘‘Chronique archéologique: Tell Dan,’’RB (): –; G. H. R.
Horsley,New Documents Illustrating Early ChristianityI:A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and
Papyri Published in (), no. .