The object
A marble slab bearing a 22-line Greek edict of an unnamed emperor. It orders that tombs and grave goods must not be disturbed, and threatens capital punishment for violation. Its date is assigned by letter forms to the early first century AD.
The inscription
The text opens:
Διάταγμα Καίσαρος: “Edict of Caesar”
Provenance
The stone’s history is the reason it is discussed at all. Wilhelm Fröhner acquired it and recorded it as “a marble slab sent from Nazareth in 1878”. That note says where it was sent from, not where it was found. It has been in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, in the Cabinet des Médailles, since 1925, and Franz Cumont published it in 1930.
The 2020 isotope study
A study by Kyle Harper and colleagues in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 30 (2020), article 102228, analysed isotopes in the marble and argued that the stone most likely came from a quarry on Kos, not from Judea. If that holds, the object is a Roman imperial edict about tomb violation that has nothing to do with Nazareth or the empty-tomb narratives. Its association with Nazareth would then reflect the shipping history of a Paris collection rather than a findspot. Marble origin alone does not, however, settle where the stone was originally displayed.
What it establishes
Roman imperial interest in punishing tomb robbery, an offence relevant to how burial and sealed tombs were policed.
Open questions
Was the stone ever in Galilee, and does it say anything about Jesus’s tomb? Its label records only where it was sent from, the isotope evidence points to Kos, and no direct link to Christianity has been shown. The dossier presents it as an instructive example of how an object’s origin is tested, set out here for your own discernment.
Where it is now
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (Cabinet des Médailles).
