ABSTRACT
If personal prayer outside the contexts of formal rubrics is an intimate communication with God and, as such, individual and informal, expressions of prayer that are exposed to the public eye in inscriptions are neither. All epigraphic expressions of prayer are organized according to formulas that encase what may have been a private, spontaneous feeling into a fixed, conventional combination of words. Nevertheless, it is still possible to distinguish among different categories of inscribed prayer that preserve in larger or lesser measure the directness and unaffectedness of the appeal to God. At one end we have the simplest invocations, requiring minimal literacy and often expressed in graffiti roughly scratched in any place where the believer found himself or herself remembering God and feeling the need of his help or protection. At the other extreme are prayers expressed in words taken from scripture: these required not only adequate literacy and learning but also a worthy, usually monumental location. Most likely these prayers were also believed to have greater potency, as they were set forth in divine words. In between we can consider the petitionary formulas combining a specific invocation (for God’s remembrance, mercy or help, or for the salvation, succor or repose of a person or persons) with an explicit or implicit hint to merit acquired by the petitioner through offerings at the holy place where the inscription was set up; for this type too requires a monumental location. The real significance of this category – prayer, or something else? – ought to be discussed.
