ABSTRACT
We know there was a Jewish community in Carthage from the funerary inscriptions at Gamart, a cemetery a few miles north of Carthage, close to the coast, which had been excavated in the 1880s by Fr Delattre. About one-half of all Jewish inscriptions found in Africa by the early twentieth century came from this cemetery, with its two hundred or so hypogea carved into the rock. Depictions of menorah and the Hebrew word shalom on inscriptions, most of which were written in Latin, would confirm the Jewish nature of these burials (Caplan 1921:4-5, 12-14). Caplan’s idea that Christians were also buried in this cemetery, based on non-Jewish imagery on the wall decorations and lamps, although dismissed by scholars (e.g. Le Bohec 1981:168-9; Barnes 1985:274), is supported by others such as MacLennan (1990:122-5).1
