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The Beccut cippus is an archaeological artifact found in 1953 in Maktar (Tunisia). It is preserved in the town's Makthar Museum, opened in 1967.
Along with the famous Makthar harvester inscription unearthed in the late 19th century and preserved in the Louvre, the cippus is one of the few Epigraphy documents found on this site to have been engraved with a Poetry.
This third century text evokes the memory of a deceased young woman. Despite the clumsiness of the wording, written in a provincial context, it provides information on the social and religious life of the town, and is a valuable insight into the Romanization of this part of Roman Africa and the integration of populations of origin at the end of the .
The site of the town of Makthar, occupied in ancient times, was the seat of a powerful city allied to Carthage, which Masinissa seized shortly before the final fall of the Punic city in 146 BC at the end of the Third Punic War. The influence of Carthaginian civilization remained strong for a long time, as evidenced by the Neo-Punic stelae dating from the 1st century and found in excavations at the site known as Bab El Aïn. From the end of the 1st century, the city benefited from Pax Romana and experienced a degree of prosperity. The institutions of the city, which became a free city in 46 BC, were permanently influenced by the Punic era, with the maintenance of three until the beginning of the 2nd century. From that century onwards, replaced them.
The Romanization of the city began with some families gaining citizenship from the reign of Trajan, and others the Equites rank during the reign of Commodus. The old Numidian city had previously become a colony under the name of Colonia Aelia Aurelia Mactaris between 176 and 180. The city's zenith came at the end of the 2nd century, during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, with intense civic activity and a surface area of over 10 hectares. In the 3rd century, it became the seat of a Episcopal see as the town's name is mentioned four times in lists of bishops from councils, including that of Carthage in 256. The end of prosperity is dated to the end of the first third of the 3rd century with the restoration of the damage caused by the Crisis of the Third Century that took place after 285.
The Beccut cippus dates from the years 250–260. It evokes the memory of a young woman, Beccut, who died in her early twenties and was Cremation according to local tradition. The Makthar archaeological site has revealed fifteen funerary Poetry dated between the 3rd and 6th centuries, but the earliest ones date no further than the end of the Severan dynasty and make up a group of nine artefacts to which the Beccut cippus belongs.
The cippus was discovered in 1953, published the following year (B.A.C., 1954, p. 120); an in-depth study was published in 1970. The site revealed four other cippes in 1965.
The area in which it was found contained numerous remains of monumental . The inscriptions found during the excavations reveal around 15% of the members of the college of local decurions in the second third of the 2nd century, and no members of the lower social classes.
The Beccut cippus is of the arulae-pillar type. It is carved from limestone and measures 1.60 m (5.2 ft) high by 0.45 m (1.47 ft) wide and 0.55 m (1.80 ft) thick. The upper part is broken on the right.
The cippus features a large area of text, above which is a degraded garland and a Conifer cone. The garland carved in stone reproduces the garlands "hung on tombs on the occasion of celebrations". The altar was adorned before , in particular those linked to the festival of Rosalia. This Roman funerary festival was introduced to Makhtar when the town became a colony.
The shape of the letters, which do not fit neatly into the listed categories (Uncial script, Roman cursive, etc.), led Jean Mallon to describe this as a new school of Palaeography, "marking the advent of modern Latin writing". Jean Mallon has carried out a comparative study of the cippus script and that of an Oxyrhynchus papyrus, in particular no. 668, which contains an epitome of Livy and was found in 1903. The manuscript has been dated to the 3rd century, and Mallon suggests the birth of writing in what is now Tunisia. The calligraphy used by the lapidarist is three times larger than on the scroll and "the proportions are exactly the same". The inscription is chiselled "in the graphic style of a contemporary book".
The first line of the text and the last two are typical of such funerary monuments, but in between is a poem of ten hexameters. The text contains prosodic errors, and the author of the inscription appears to be an "improvised poet", according to Édouard Galletier.
Beccut speaks in the text. The two lines giving the deceased's full name are badly damaged. The inscription form includes an "abbreviated invocation to the Manes", the name of the deceased and his age.
A comparative study of the pillar altars found on the archaeological site by Gilbert Charles-Picard suggests that the Beccut cippus dates the death of Makthar's harvester after 260, while the epigraphic study notes that "the writing is not identical"; the harvester died at an old age and his ascension may date from the city's period of prosperity, between 210 and 235.
The main interest of the cippus is Onomastics. Beccut is the cognomen of the deceased, indicating a Ancient Carthage or Ancient Libya origin. It would be the feminine form of the name BG'T, Bogud, a princely name. The deceased may have had two cognomina, one in Latin and the other in the native language. The husband's cognomen may have been Milo. The cognomen of African origin can be seen, in the words of Jean-Marie Lassère, as "the revenge of indigenous tradition, relegating the Gens, symbol of Romanization, to the shadows." As for the husband's name, ILONI, this is not explained by the Punic language, and specialists suggest the reading MILONI due to haplography, the dropping of one of the letters. The cognomen Milo was prestigious and its attribution to his son is possible by "a provincial scholar."
Although the document gives no information on the couple's social position, it is assumed that they belonged to the city's "well-to-do bourgeoisie." The senatorial and equestrian families were not easily distinguishable in the city, and the Curiate assembly was open to people of modest means "by dint of hard work." The cognomen Beccut betrays a "recent promotion."
The term "Euthesia" evokes a religious community. The city's wealthy social classes honored Cybele and Liber, and Bacchism is reflected in the greater presence of Dionysus symbols on funerary monuments, such as a pine cone on Beccut's cippus. However, the latter is used as much for the cult of Saturn as for the Magna Mater or Liber. Beccut may have been a Maenad, and "Euthesia" may have been one of the "mystical vocables", the Eu prefix "belonging to the technical language of medicine." The signum on the monument is perhaps a sign of membership of the Isiac community. Although the cult is little known in Makthar, initiation elsewhere is possible. The cult of Dionysus and Osiris may have come close, according to a "commonly accepted assimilation."
The cult of Isis imposed on its followers "a severe discipline, even to the point of asceticism", and Beccut's epitaph accords with these principles of life. The word "Euthesia" at the end of the inscription introduces "an atmosphere of strange mystery."
The expression DMS ( Diis Manibus Sacrum, to the sacred Manes gods) is stereotyped. However, the use of the invocation to the Manes gods, early on the African monuments of the Proconsular capital or Dougga, is late "as one moves away from Carthage." Consolation is a "commonplace theme."
The verse study reveals "no emotion" on the part of the husband, who according to Gilbert Charles-Picard "must have been in a hurry to remarry." The poem's style "is characterized by its banality, both clumsy and pompous". The language is described by Charles-Picard as "artificial" and having nothing to do with the language spoken by the local population.
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