1 Wagner, D. M. et al., “ Yersinia pestis and the plague of Justinian 541-543 AD: a genomic analysis,” The Lancet Infectious Diseases 14.4 (2014) 319–26 (doi 10.1016/S1473-3099(13)70323-2)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. The analysis was based on ancient DNA derived from the teeth of two plague victims buried in the Aschheim-Bajuwarenring cemetery in Bavaria. The study showed that the strains of Y pestis involved in the Justinianic plague are distinct from those responsible for both the second (Black Death, 14th-17th c.) and third (19th-20th c.) pandemics, and that they are either extinct or unsampled in contemporary wild rodent populations.

2 For an excellent introduction to the Justinianic plague, see Little, L. K. (ed.), Plague and the end of antiquity: the pandemic of 541-750 (New York 2007)Google Scholar, based on a conference held at the American Academy in Rome in December 2001.

3 These areas will henceforth be referred to collectively as “Palestine”.

4 Both Africa (P. Sarris, “Bubonic plague in Byzantium: the evidence of non-literary sources,” in Little [supra n.2] 120-23) and China ( Morelli, G. et al., Yersinia pestis genome sequencing identifies patterns of global phylogenetic diversity,” Nature Genetics 42 [2010] 1140–43 [doi 10.1038/ng.705])CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed have been posited as the source of the disease.

5 L. K. Little, “Life and afterlife of the first plague pandemic,” in id. (supra n.2) with references cited.

6 For further information on the disease and its epidemiology, see R. Sallares, “Ecology, evolution, and epidemiology of plague,” in Little (supra n.2) 231-89.

7 The first wave was probably still inflicting death at least in some parts of the empire as late as the beginning of 544. See D. Stathakopoulos, “Crime and punishment: the plague in the Byzantine Empire, 541-749,” in Little (supra n.2) 102, noting a cluster of 9 epitaphs in Rome the last of which is dated to late February 544 (see below), as well as Justinian’s Novella 122, issued on March 23, 544, which suggests that the plague had ceased. The fact that the Nea Church in Jerusalem was dedicated in November 543 should imply that the epidemic had already subsided in Palestine by that time.

8 Stathakopoulos, D., Famine and pestilence in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire: a systematic survey of subsistence crises and epidemics (Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs, vol. 9; 2004) 113 Google Scholar, and id. (supra n.7) 102.

9 Several scholars have attempted to calculate the percentage of overall mortality arising from the plague. Russell, J. C. (“That earlier plague,” Demography 5.1 [1968] 180)CrossRefGoogle Scholar estimated a reduction of 20-25% of the European-Mediterranean population for the initial wave of the pandemic, and a total decline of c.50-60% of the pre-plague population for the period 541-700; cf., however, Dols, M. W., The Black Death in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ 1977) 17, especially n.15Google Scholar, for reservations regarding these estimates. Allen, P. (“The ‘Justinianic’ plague,” Byzantion 49 [1979] 10–12)Google ScholarPubMed, albeit with certain reservations regarding the feasibility of attempts to reconstruct the number of deaths, tentatively proposes an average mortality for the initial wave of about onethird of the population. It is tempting to apply Russell’s and Allen’s percentages to Palestine and Arabia. Broshi, M. (“The population of western Palestine in the Roman-Byzantine period,” BASOR 236 [1979] 1–10)Google Scholar estimated that the population of Palestine stood at c.1,000,000 at its peak, which he puts around the year 600, while Tsafrir, Y. (“Some notes on the settlement and demography of Palestine in the Byzantine period: the archaeological evidence,” in Seger, J. D. (ed.), Retrieving the past: essays on archaeological research and methodology in honor of G. W. Van Beek [Winona Lake, IN 1996] 270)Google Scholar, basing himself on Broshi, gave the figure of 1,500,000 for both sides of the Jordan river (for higher estimates, rejected by these authors, see references cited there). If we assume that the population of Palestine actually peaked in the mid-6th c. and then began to decline due to plague, Russell and Allen’s percentages would yield figures for the initial outbreak of c. 200,000-333,000 deaths in Palestine and c.300,000-500,000 deaths in Palestine and Arabia combined. For a broader look at the demographics of Byzantine Palestine, see Dauphin, C., La Palestine byzantine: peuplement et populations, vols. I-III (BAR S726; Oxford 1998)Google Scholar; ead., “The birth of a new discipline: archaeological demography,” Bull. Anglo-Israel Arch. Soc. 17 (1999) 77–91 Google Scholar. For a more recent discussion of population estimates in the region, see Kennedy, D. L., Gerasa and the Decapolis: a “virtual island” in northwest Jordan (London 2007) 108–25Google Scholar.

10 Frenkel, G., The plague epidemic in the Byzantine Empire during the reign of Justinian: medical, historical, political and social perspectives (M.A. Thesis, Tel Aviv Univ. 2003) 68 [Hebrew]Google Scholar.

11 In some cases, problems of transmission further complicate the picture.

12 Durliat, J., “La peste du VIe siècle: pour un nouvel examen des sources byzantines,” in Kravari, V., Morrisson, C. and Lefort, J., Hommes et richesses dans l’Empire byzantine (Paris 1989) 107–19Google Scholar, cited by Conrad, L. I., “Epidemic disease in central Syria in the late sixth century: some insights from the verse of H�assān ibn Thābit,” Byz&ModGrStud 18 (1994) 55 Google Scholar and Little (supra n.5) 17. Other scholars (e.g., Whittow, M., The making of Orthodox Byzantium 600-1025 [London 1996] 66–68)CrossRefGoogle Scholar have also minimized the impact of the first plague pandemic.

13 Conrad ibid. 56. Not all of the literary sources on the plague need to be suspected of exaggeration. Straightforward testimony to the fact that plague had reached the Judean Desert in Palestine by the early months of 542 is provided by Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Cyriaci (ed. Schwartz, 1939, pp. 228–29)Google Scholar, according to which the fathers of the Old Laura of Souka, in the face of the terrifying epidemic, brought the holy man Cyriacus back to the laura from his hermitage as a form of protection.

14 Cf., e.g., Conrad ibid. 55-56; Little (supra n.5) 14-15; Kennedy (supra n.9) 87-88.

15 Allen (supra n.9) 11.

16 For numismatic evidence, see Sarris (supra n.4) 127-30, and Ariel, D. T., “The coins from the surveys and excavations of caves in the Northern Judean desert,” ‘Atiqot 41.2 (2002) 299–300Google Scholar. For ceramic evidence, see Vaag, L. E., “Pottery and plague,” in Malfitana, D., Poblome, J. and Lund, J. (edd.), Old pottery in a new century (Catania 2006) 241–50Google Scholar. For non-epigraphic evidence related to graves and burial customs, see M. Kulikowski, “Plague in Spanish late antiquity,” in Little (supra n.2) 152-53 and 158-59. For general evidence related to demography and urban development, see Tsafrir, Y. and Foerster, G., “Urbanism at Scythopolis-Bet Shean in the fourth to seventh centuries,” DOP 51 (1997) 125 Google Scholar; H. Kennedy, “Justinianic plague in Syria and the archaeological evidence,” in Little (supra n.2) 87-95; Ma‘oz, Z. U., The Ghassānids and the fall of the Golan synagogues (Qazrin 2008)Google Scholar; Dar, S., Rural settlements on Mount Carmel in antiquity (Archaeopress Archaeology 99; Oxford 2014) 186 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These are some of the examples of which I am aware, but there are certainly others. To the best of my knowledge, there are, to date, no cemeteries or burials in Palestine or Arabia clearly attributable to the first plague pandemic. While the excavation of tombs is restricted in the modern State of Israel, a fact that may contribute to the scarcity of such evidence, a similar scarcity elsewhere (the Aschheim-Bajuwarenring cemetery [supra n.1] is a welcome exception) suggests that those restrictions are not necessarily the reason. Another factor may be the poor survival of ancient DNA in the region’s dry climate. For examples of burials in Palestine/Arabia that have been proposed as possibly plague-related, see Dauphin 1998 (supra n.9) 872 no. 187 and 875-76 no. 236; Stathakopoulos 2004 (supra n.8) 150; Conrad (supra n.12) 28. The Byzantine-era mass burials unearthed in Jerusalem are probably related to the Persian massacre: Milik, J. T., “La topographie de Jérusalem vers la fin de l’époque byzantine,” MélUSJ 37 (1960–1961) 182–83Google Scholar; Reich, R., “‘God knows their names’: mass Christian grave revealed in Jerusalem,” BAR 22.2 (1996) 26–33 and 60Google Scholar; Avni, G., The necropoleis of Jerusalem and Beth Govrin during the 4th-7th centuries A.D. as a model for urban cemeteries in Palestine in the Late Roman and Byzantine periods (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem 1997)Google Scholar [Hebrew]; Naggar, Y., “Human skeletal remains from the Mamilla Cave, Jerusalem,” ‘Atiqot 43 (2002) 141–48Google Scholar; Avni, G., “The Persian conquest of Jerusalem (614 C.E.) — an archaeological assessment,” BASOR 357 (2010) 36–40 Google Scholar.

17 Segni, L. Di, “Epigraphic documentation on building in the provinces of Palaestina and Arabia, 4th-7th c.,” in Humphrey, J. H. (ed.), The Roman and Byzantine Near East, vol. 2 (JRA Suppl. 31, 1999) 149–78Google Scholar. The study also showed that, whereas before the reign of Justinian a greater number of building projects can be attributed to cities than to villages, after him the situation is reversed. In a subsequent paper (“Greek inscriptions in transition from the Byzantine to the Early Islamic period,” in Cotton, H. M. et al. [edd.], From Hellenism to Islam: cultural and linguistic change in the Roman Near East [Cambridge 2009] 352–73)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, it emerged that “the erection of public [as opposed to religious] buildings effectively ceases after the plague”, and that “Justinian’s reign seems to represent a turning point in the displacement of the focus from city to village”. Di Segni connects these changes “principally with the demographic and economic crisis caused by the plague in 541/2”, and views them “as the starting point of a decline that became evident only after the end of Byzantine rule” (ead., “Late Antiquity in the provinces of Palaestina and Arabia: realities and change,” in C. Witschel and C. Machado (edd.), The epigraphic culture(s) of late antiquity (HABES, Stuttgart; in press).

18 Kennedy (supra n.9) 123-25; also 28-29 and 34-36.

19 Sarris (supra n.4) 126. This is in response to Durliat’s (supra n.12, p. 109) statistical analysis of funerary inscriptions, which showed no sudden increase in the rate of mortality through the course of the 6th c.

20 Harding, V., “Burial of the plague dead in early modern London,” in Champion, J. A. I. (ed.), Epidemic disease in London (London 1993) 53–64 Google Scholar.

21 Conrad (supra n.12) 55-56. Exceptions include 3 Greek epitaphs for 4 individuals buried at the cemetery of Zoar, east of the Dead Sea, which explicitly state that the deceased were victims of an earthquake: Meimaris, Y. E. and Kritikakou-Nikolaropoulou, K. I., Inscriptions from Palaestina Tertia, vol. Ia, The Greek inscriptions from Ghor es-Safi (Byzantine Zoora) (ΜΕΛΕΤΗΜΑΤΑ 41; Athens 2005) 116–21, nos. 22-24Google Scholar. All 3 epitaphs are dated May 18, 363, corresponding to a severe quake known to have struck Palestine and Arabia in May 363; see Amiran, D. H. K., Arieh, E. and Turcotte, T., “Earthquakes in Israel and adjacent areas,” IEJ 44 (1994) 260–305 Google Scholar; Ambraseys, N., Earthquakes in the Mediterranean and the Middle East: a multidisciplinary study of seismicity up to 1900 (New York 2009) 148–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For another epigraphic instance of death in an earthquake, see Feissel, D., Chroniques d’épigraphie byzantine 1987-2004 (Paris 2006) no. 998Google Scholar. On death in earthquakes documented by inscriptions, see Robert, L., “Stèle funéraire de Nicomédie et séismes dans les inscriptions,” BCH 102 (1978) 395–408 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Koder, J., “Ein inschriftlicher Beleg zur ‘justinianischen’ Pest in Zora (Azra‘a),” Byzantinoslavica 56 (1995) 13–18 Google Scholar = CIG 8628 and W. H. Waddington, Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie, recueillies et expliquées (Paris 1870) no. 2497. The text is corrected according to Feissel, D., Chroniques d’épigraphie byzantine 1987-2004 (Paris 2006) 267 no. 847Google Scholar, in which the site is identified as Zoraua (modern Ezra‘), as opposed to Zora. A Latin epitaph from Spain dating from the year 609 (the inscription uses the provincial era) also mentions the plague: a�b inguina/li plagao/biit er(a) DC/XLVII. See CIL II 7, 677, cited in Kulikowski (supra n.16) 156, n.25 (the reference is mistakenly given as 667).

23 Meimaris, Y. E. and Kritikakou-Nikolaropoulou, K. I., Inscriptions from Palaestina Tertia, vol. Ib, The Greek inscriptions from Ghor es-Safi (Byzantine Zoora) (Supplement), Khirbet Qazone and Feinan (Athens 2008) 147–53, nos. 68-70. Nos. 69-70Google Scholar are fragmentary but also appear originally to have contained the expression “one-third of the population died”. Their years are missing but they have been tentatively dated to 592 on the basis of their similarity to no. 68.

24 Evagrius Schol., Hist. Eccl. 4.29. See also Meimaris and Kritikakou-Nikolaropoulou ibid. 149-50, with references cited.

25 To support their reading ἐμαμίουν, which they translate as “were crying for food”, the publishers of the inscription note an undated inscription on a wooden beam found in the el-Aqsa Mosque (Jerusalem) that refers to a famine and also mentions the death of approximately one third of the world’s population. However, L. Di Segni, writing on the Jerusalem inscription in Cotton, H. M. et al., Corpus inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, vol. 1, part 2 [Berlin 2012] 413, no. 1021Google Scholar, rejects their reading of the problematic word, preferring to regard it as an unexplained hapax.

26 E.g., Kirk, G. E. and Welles, C. B., “The inscriptions,” in Colt, H. D. (ed.), Excavations at Nessana, vol. 1 (London 1962) 168 and 179–81Google Scholar; Negev, A., The Greek inscriptions from the Negev (SBF Coll. Minor 25, 1981) 30 Google Scholar; Y. Tsafrir, “The Greek inscriptions,” in id. et al. (ed.), Excavations at Rehovotin-the-Negev, vol. 1. The northern church (Qedem 25, 1988) 161; Segni, L. Di, Dated Greek inscriptions from Palestine from the Roman and Byzantine period (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1997) 911–12Google Scholar; Dauphin 1998 (supra n.9) 512-13; Stathakopoulos (supra n.7) 101. Stathakopoulos (ibid. 102) notes a similar concentration of dated epitaphs from the city of Rome — 9 within a period of 4 months, from early November 543 to late February 544 — suggesting the disease's presence there at that time. No similar frequency could be found among Rome’s dated epitaphs at any other point within the 6th c.

27 Kirk and Welles ibid. 179-80, no. 112.

28 Glucker, C. A. M., The city of Gaza in the Roman and Byzantine periods (BAR S325; Oxford 1987) 136–38, no. 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The inscription has no year, only an indictional year that could have fallen in 541/42. On the meaning of indiction, see below n.37.

29 E.g., as in Tsafrir, Y., Segni, L. Di and Green, J., Tabula Imperii Romani — Iudaea-Palaestina (Jerusalem 1994)Google Scholar.

30 For the Christian Greek epitaphs, see Meimaris and Kritikakou-Nikolaropoulou 2005 (supra n.21) and 2008 (supra n.23). For the Jewish Aramaic epitaphs, see Misgav, H., “Two Jewish tombstones from Zoar,” Israel Museum Studies in Archaeology 5 (2006) 35–46 Google Scholar, and references cited.

31 In my master's thesis ( Evidence for the ‘Justinianic Plague’ in dated Greek epitaphs of the Byzantine period from the provinces of Palestine and Arabia [Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2012])Google Scholar, the epitaphs from Zoar were compared with the main sample of epitaphs in a bar graph; these groups were called, respectively, the “Comparison Group” and the “Primary Group”. The epitaphs from Zoar exhibited a more or less normal curve, extending mainly over the 4th and 5th c., with a peak in the 430s. By the 520s, the custom of writing such deted epitaphs appears to have ended at the site, apart from a slight (anomalous) resurgence in the 570s. This picture reflects the rise and fall of a particular funerary epigraphic custom at a particular site.

32 Most of the epitaphs from Palestine and southern Phoenice were culled from Di Segni (supra n.26). Most of the epitaphs from Arabia were taken from Meimaris, Y. E., Kritikakou, K. and Bougia, P., Chronological systems in Roman-Byzantine Palestine and Arabia: the evidence of the dated Greek inscriptions [ΜΕΛΕΤΗΜΑΤΑ 17; Athens 1992)Google Scholar, with recourse to Canova, R., Iscrizioni e monumenti protocristiani del paese di Moab (Rome 1954)Google Scholar. Volumes of the SEG and AE (the sections dealing with material from Palestine, Arabia, and Syria [Phoenician sites only]) that appeared between the time of the completion of Di Segni’s and Meimaris’s works and the completion of my thesis were combed for additional material, as were the volumes of the IGLSyr, Jordanie 4, Pétra et la Nabatène méridionale by Sartre, M. (Paris 1993)Google Scholar, and IGLSyr, Jordanie 5, La Jordanie du nord-est, by N. Bader (Beirut 2009).

33 See Meimaris, Kritikakou and Bougia (ibid.) and Di Segni (supra n.26).

34 For examples, see the index of funerary terms in Di Segni ibid. 1043-44, and the introduction in Meimaris and Kritikakou-Nikolaropoulou 2005 (supra n.21) 24-28.

35 Namely, the time the new year is considered to begin.

36 See Meimaris, Kritikakou and Bougia (supra n.32) and Di Segni (supra n.26).

37 The indiction was a 15-year cycle used in the Byzantine period for the purposes of taxation. The years of the cycle were numbered from 1 to 15 and began in September. Such years can also be called indictions in their own right (i.e., Indiction 4 = the fourth year in a given indictional cycle) and were sometimes used in the recording of dates.

38 For example, an epitaph from Tell Abyad in Jordan (Meimaris, Kritikakou and Bougia [supra n.32] 79, no. 8) records the year 431. This year should be calculated according to the Pompeian era (starting in 64 B.C.) used in nearby Tafas, and thus corresponds to autumn 367 to autumn 368. This epitaph was entered into our data-base as year 367.5 and calculated as 368. The same general principle was applied to ‘trickier’ cases of epitaphs falling between two years, such as the epitaph from el-Mote in Jordan (Meimaris, Kritikakou and Bougia [supra n.32] 299, no. 514), which dates somewhere between September 652 and March 653: this epitaph was entered in the data-base as 652, since 4 of the months fall in 652 and only 3 in 653.

39 See Stathakopoulos 2004 (supra n.8) and 2007 (supra n.7). He records 18 waves from the time of the initial outbreak in 541 to the final one in the mid-8th c. The present study does not extend into the 8th c. since there are virtually no dated Greek epitaphs from the region after the 7th c.

40 The few epitaphs dating from 544 are not included in this count since by then the plague may well already have subsided in the region. See above n.7.

41 See above n.23.

42 Efforts were made to find other historical explanations (e.g., earthquake, drought, famine, uprising, military conquest) for the spikes that do not correspond to plague years. A water shortage, at least in the vicinity of the Judean Desert, did occur sometime between 544 and 555 while Cyril of Scythopolis was residing at the monastery of Euthymius ( Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Euthymius 51 [ed. Schwartz, E., Leipzig 1939; transl. Price, R. M., intro. and notes Binns, J.; Kalamazoo, MI 1991])Google Scholar, but it is unlikely that this event was serious enough to explain the spike in the year 555. None of the spikes can be precisely correlated with the earthquake chronologies for the region (earthquakes in Palestine have been postulated for the years 502, 551, 580(?), 631 or 632, 637, 641, 659/60 and 672, according to Amiran, Arieh and Turcotte [supra n.21], and for 502, 551, 634 and 659 according to Ambraseys [supra n.21]), even though the spike of 582 is close to the estimated earthquake date of 580, said to have affected Palestine, and the spike of 643 is close to that said to have struck Syria and Judaea in 641. Of the so-called Samaritan revolts, only the riot that broke out in Caesarea in the mid-550s is close to a spike in the graph (for the year 555), but the effects of this uprising seem to have been confined to the vicinity of Caesarea (see Segni, L. Di, “Rebellions of Samaritans in Palestine in the Romano-Byzantine period,” in Crown, A. D., Pummer, R. and Tal, A. [edd.], A companion to Samaritan studies [Tübingen 1993] 199–201)Google Scholar. Finally, there are the Persian conquest of Palestine of 614, and the Muslim conquest of 638 (cf. Rosen-Ayalon, M., Islamic art and archaeology in Palestine [Walnut Creek, CA 2006] 21–23)Google Scholar. Neither of these correlates with spikes in the graph, although the spike in 643 may have something to do with the aftermath of the Muslim takeover; indeed, neither event seems to have been especially bloody other than the Persian massacre in Jerusalem itself in 614.

43 Di Segni, forthcoming (supra n.17); the sample used in the study, which also includes the Roman period, comprises more than 6000 items.

44 Di Segni, ibid.

45 E.g., in the collection edited by Little (supra n.2).

46 Di Segni, forthcoming (supra n.17).

47 Frösén, J. and Fiema, Z. T. (edd.), Petra: a city forgotten and rediscovered (Helsinki 2002) 181–87Google Scholar.