Rilettura di še-le-raglô nell’epigrafe venosina di Paregorio ben Teodoro dell’anno 829/830

Abstract

A New Reading of še-le-raglô in the Epitaph of Paregorios ben Theodoros from Venosa of the Year 829/830

In this note, the author attempts to clarify a word that has resulted difficult to understand by previous scholars. The word appears in the funerary inscription of Paregorios, son of Theodoros, which is still extant outside the Trinity church in Venosa. The word that constitutes the crux interpretum is še-le-raglô, engraved in the penultimate line. Literally meaning “at his footstep, at his foot”, in the first half of the 20^th century, its first interpreter and editor, Umberto Cassuto, made at least two attempts to understand its meaning integrating it with another word, a verb, which has been deleted. The new proposal is to translate še-le-raglô as follows: “May be that on the occasion of his walking” or “That while he moves his steps”, referring to the deceased with an implicit object (towards the Gan Eden); the word erased should be yibbaneh, “may be reconstructed”. This reading offers a good understanding of the following last line:  “the House of the Saint of Saints”, that is, the Temple of Jerusalem.