Four New Burial Inscriptions and a Survey of the Nessana Necropolis

Workers of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority discovered two Byzantine Period, Christian, tombstones written in Greek on limestone slabs south east of the mound of the ancient city of Nessana. One of the stone slabs is a nearly complete top of an anthropomorphic stele bearing the epitaph of a woman named Maria dated to the last decade of the 6th century. This discovery led P. Betzer at the head of a team of IAA archaeologists to conduct a drone based aerial survey and a subsequent foot survey of all the necropoleis surrounding Nessana. During the survey two additional, fragmentary, Christian epitaphs were discovered. We present here the four newly discovered inscriptions, and the preliminary results of the survey.