New Greek inscriptions from Dafyāna in North-East Jordan

International audienceThis article is intended to be a contribution to the corpus of the Greek and Latin Inscriptions in Jordan (‘Inscriptions de la Jordanie’). The project is coordinated by Dr. Pierre-Louis Gatier (CNRS Lyon) and Dr. Nabil Bader (Yarmouk University), under the auspices of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan (DoA). One of the main goals of the programme, which is shared by the academic team (Nabil Bader and Julien Aliquot) and by the Mafraq Branch of the DoA (Abdulqader Al-Husan), is to complete an epigraphical survey of North-East Jordan. The following study illustrates the first results of a fruitful cooperation in the region. The Greek inscriptions presented here were found in the village of Dafyana by the Mafraq Branch of the DoA, and are currently preserved in Mafraq. All are simple epitaphs engraved on basalt stelae, similar to previously known inscriptions from the same region. These documents provide new information on settlement history and burial customs in the southern part of Ḥawrān during the Roman Empire. One of them is particularly worthy of note; the inscription records the foundation of a collective tomb by a junior officer of the Roman army who died in the Black Sea region, but whose body was carried home for burial by his servant in AD 312/313. This inscription is an important addition to the very scant epigraphical evidence of the Tetrarchic province of Diospontus. It also confirms that Dafyana belonged to the territory of Bostra, the capital of Roman Arabia. While emphasizing the role of this area as a recruitment pool for the Roman army and administration, it also increases the number of documents which provide evidence regarding transportation of dead soldiers’ remains to their homeland