Mourir à Dougga. Recueil des inscriptions funéraires

Mourir à Dougga, Recueil des inscriptions funéraires takes place into a large program about the rehabilitation and the promotion of one of the most prestigious archeological site in Tunisia. This program was induced in 1991, when the Head of the Tunisian State decided to create a national archeological park, here, at Dougga. The inscription corpus inventory and publication is therefore only one of the chapters concerning the whole archeological patrimony of ancient Thugga.

The number of texts makes the epitaph corpus one of the richest - if not the richest - of Roman Africa. It gathers more than three quarters of the city Latin texts, in other words the community which, under the Roman Empire, combined the urban town and its nourishing territory. The total number of inscriptions, that is 1617, represents the first asset of such a collection. This size is sufficient to consider it as the reflection of the society of one of the numerous provincial cities of the Roman Empire. With a few exceptions, the wording terms are very similar and it conveys the equality of all in front of death, whatever was its position within the social hierarchy. Putting into series the text supports, the ages, the designation and the onomastic of hundreds of deceased provide invaluable material for the study of a provincial community.