Salome also called Grapte

Abstract

The archive of Salome Koma'ise, dated to the reign of Hadrian, reveals that her mother Salome had a second name, .1 Reviewing Cotton and Yardeni's publication of this archive, Glen Bowersock points out that the name is much more common than Cotton's commentary suggests, and continues: 'Above all, she has missed the brothers Theodoros and Theophanes, who were bom in the mountains of Moab in the late 8th century A.D. Both men bore the sobriquet Graptos because each had been tattooed with 12 lines of iambic verse on their foreheads ... It is worth thinking about whether the names Graptos and Grapte implied body markings and whether Salome Komai'se's mother bore a tattoo that was used to individuate her from her homonymous daughter'.In the following I will argue that a connection with tattooing is unlikely, and that there is a better explanation.2It is best to begin by recalling some aspects of ancient tattooing.In current western practice it is usually decorative, and consists of designs; letters when used at all are sub ordinate to the design, for example when the name of a boy-or girl-friend is written beneath a pierced heart.In antiquity, by contrast, decorative tattooing is associated with peoples regarded as barbarian.Thus in the third century Herodian says of the Britons that they 'tattoo () their bodies with various designs () and with pic tures of all kinds of animals'.The only type of tattooing customary within the

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