The earliest account of the Judaic community and prayer room in the city of Pantikapaion appears in six manumission inscriptions dated from 57 to the second century AD. These manumissions are standard legal acts certifying the release of pagan slaves from slavery in a prayer house (προσευχή) in Pantikapaion. According to the release conditions described, the said manumissions comprise of two groups. Simultaneous Judaic Bosporan manumissions from Pantikapaion refer to two Judaic communities: the inscriptions of the first group (CIB, nos. 70, 72, 73) state that the slaves were freed into the protectorate of the Judaic community, though according to the inscriptions of the second group (CIB, no. 71, and from Bosphorskii Lane), into the protectorate of the community of the Jews and the God-fearing (θεοσεβεῖς). Plausibly the members of the Judaic community and the “God-fearing” pagans who also entered it inhabited the coastal area of the city, the fishermen’s quarter in particular, from the mid-first century on. There are amphorae and a lamp showing menorah uncovered in the said quarter, which belonged to these Jews. There probably was also a communal prayer house. Some information about the structure and organisation of a Bosporan synagogue appears in the texts of Greek-language epitaphs of men discovered in 2020 near Pavlovskii cape, in a dacha settlement in the vicinity of Kerch, at the third- and fourth-century Jewish cemetery which is known from 1867. These inscriptions mention a rabbi and archsinagogos, or the spiritual leader of the community, and two presbyters, or the elders.
synagogue, Jews, god-fearing, prayer room, Pantikapaion, manumission
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