MORE THOUGHTS ON THE TALPIOT TOMB: Dr. Alexander Panayotov, our Research Fellow for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project, sends the following interesting thoughts:

Just few observations on inscription 701 from the tomb in the Talpiot quarter of Jerusalem (the so-called ‘Mary Magdalene’ inscription). This is a standard Greek funerary inscription. The formula is: X(name in nom.) followed by Y(name in gen.) meaning X son/daughter of Y. Thus, there are a number of possible readings (names after Prof. Bauckham’s postings):

A. Mara son/daughter of Mariamenon/Mariamene

Note Ed Cook’s observation that the name Mara could be a masculine one. [Although Ed is referring to the supposed Aramaic word for "master" rather than a name. - JRD]

The obvious hitch in this reading is that the inscription starts with name in genitive, which, of course, should be read as ‘Of Mariamenon/Mariamene…’. This doesn’t, however, contradict the reading above. It is not impossible that the person who inscribed the text in Greek was still following the local manner of writing (i.e. from right to left). Or, just, the Greek text was arranged in a different way for reasons we don’t know. The name Mara occurs on inscription, dated to the 1st century CE, from Taucheira-Arsinoe in Cyrenaica. The editors of SEG (vol. 16, 1959, no. 918) and the Lexicon of Greek Personal names (vol. 1, 1987, p. 298) consider Mara a feminine name. This reading, however, presumes that the name is in the nominative.

Another possibility is to read the name Mara as the genitive form of Maras. The Doric genitive singular ending –a, was, in later periods, applied to feminine and masculine names ending in –as. According to Tal Ilan’s lexicon the name Maras occurs on papyri from Egypt. However, I was not able to double check her sources (we don’t have the books she refers to in the library). Thus, the inscription could also be read as:

B. Of Maras son/daughter of Mariamenon/Mariamene.

or

C. Of Mariamenon/Mariamene daughter of Maras.

It is, of course, possible that we can have reading C with the name Mara in the nominative – although not grammatically correct it really depends on the level of knowledge of Greek, which the author of the inscription possessed. This, we just don’t know.

My observations are preliminary. I was not able to consult Rahmani’s corpus and have been working with the photos published on the Discovery website. This means that I am not aware of the archaeological and epigraphic context of the tomb. There are many questions still withstanding. Like, was the inscription added later to the ossuary? Do we know if some of the ossuaries, or the whole tomb, were re-used (which means inscribing new names, formulas, etc.)? Whatever the case, I think that this inscription does not mention a person with alternative name, but follows a standard Greek funerary formula.

--
Dr Alexander Panayotov
School of Divinity
University of St Andrews
St Mary's College, South Street
St Andrews KY16 9JU
Scotland/UK

UPDATE: Craig Evans has similarly suggested the interpretation "Mariamne's (daughter) Mara (or Martha)" in a guest post at Deinde.