HIERAPOLIS (now called Pambuk Kalessi):

By: Richard Gottheil

City in Phrygia, Asia Minor; mentioned in Col. iv. 13 together with the neighboring Laodicea. It was a prosperous city during the Roman period, largely on account of its medicinal springs. A community of Jews lived there during the second and third centuries, three or four of whose grave-inscriptions have been found. In one (found 1853 by Wagener) Publius Ælius Glycon consecrates a family sepulcher and bequeaths "to the honored directors of [the gild of] purple-dyers" 200 denarii, that his grave may be decorated "on the Feast of Unleavened Bread"; to "the gild of carpet-weavers" 150 denarii, to be used for a similar purpose on theFeast of Pentecost. Aurelia Glyconida, daughter of Ammianus, consecrates a sepulcher for herself, while her husband Marcus Aurelius Theophilus, called "Asaph" (?), "of the people of the Jews," forbids, under a fine of 100 denarii against the Jewish community, the burying of strangers there.

The inscription on the tomb of one Aurelia Augusta of the Soteikos also provides for a fine against the Jewish community if any one besides herself, her husband Glyconianus Apros, and her children be buried there. An inscription (Ramsay, No. 412) found on a tomb outside the city gate and on the road to Tripolis, set by a certain Marcus Aurelius Diodorus Koriaskos, called "Asbolos," also attaches a fine to the interment there of strangers, against the "sacred management" and the "revered gerusia." A certain sum is left, also, to the "council of the purple-dyers" for some religious act on the anniversary of the birthday of the deceased. It is possible that the "gild of the purple-dyers" was a Jewish body. The decorating of the graves on Jewish holy days shows how far the Jews of Phrygia had departed from Talmudic usage.

G.