Expressions of hope quoted from Biblical texts in Christian funerary inscriptions (3rd-7th cent. C.E.)

The use of the Biblical texts in ancient Christian inscriptions is a very rare phenomenon (around 800 documents in all the so-called orbis christianus antiquus) and only a few of these inscriptions are in a funerary context: a little less than 200 units. Among these documents, expressions connected with the idea of hope are the most common ones, but we must keep in mind that they are effectively only 70 inscriptions, in five hundred years, both in the East and in the West. This is a very limited documentary base but nonetheless very interesting. It has to remark that these expressions of Christian faith coexist with a relevant and complex range of other needs, themes and formulas, deriving from the ancient classical tradition

Epigraphy, Art History, Archaeology. A Case of Interaction between Research Projects: The Epigraphic Database Bari (UniBa, Italy) and the Domitilla Projekt (ÖAW, Austria - DAI, Deutschland)

Corpora of inscriptions are fundamental collections of the epigraphic material, and they display in the best manner of their times all that was thought to be important about every single written content. From a modern point of view, the perception of inscriptions is, besides the pure text, very much enlarged by its context, in our sense the archaeological, topographical or architectural context being the position in the specific situation, where the inscription was written and subsequently meant to be read (or simply to be). In the last years, with the ongoing digitalisation of scientific approaches, the collections of epigraphic material could benefit from this development as well, adding specific information about the physical position and the topographical context to the inscriptions. As a case study, in this paper we would like to present the inscriptions of the catacomb of Domitilla, at Rome, and the benefits that one can have by considering not only the texts but also using the topographical context for their interpretation. On the one hand, the catacomb itself was recently documented with a 3D-laserscanner, while on the other hand all inscriptions still in situ were stored in the EDB. Our approach is now to combine the 3D data with the epigraphic data base and to create interactive catacomb plans, in order to better understand the topographical and chronological developments and also to re-contextualise the epigraphic remains in their original placement. Displayed in this way, the inscriptions offer their entire value as epigraphic monuments more clearly