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the right instead of 'Alâ, daughter of Yarhai."(64) The deep furrows in the forehead and the lines around the mouth characterize Bôrfâ as an elderly man. His hair is arranged in three horizontal rows, the iris in the wide open eyes is circumscribed by two incised circles, he is unbearded and the himation folds on the left and right upper arm have the peculiar triangular shape,(65) all characteristics which point to a date in the first group (about 50-150 A.D.), (66) probably late in the period because of the excellent workmanship. The himation is arranged as on the bust of MaIkû (see bust nr. 1), but Bôrfâ's left hand holds, instead of a branch, the "schedulä. The wide open eyes, which recur on the frescoes of Doura, probably go back to old Oriental tradition and were to appear again in the Byzantine art.(67) All in all, this bust is an excellent example of the first period of Palmyrene sculpture, when it was still more bound by Oriental than by Hellenistic traditions.

The inscription presents a number of interesting problems. The proper names are all well known and often met with in Palmyra, but the term "Chaldean" is here mentioned for only the fourth time in Palmyra.(68) Originally an ethnical expression denoting the founders of the Neo-Babylonian empire, it came to be employed about the priests of Babylon, famous for astronomical and astrological knowledge, and it is in this sense that the Greek equivalent is used by Strabo when he speaks of the schools of at Borsippa and at Orchoe, as also by Diodorus Siculus and Philon of Alexandria.(69) It was also given as a title of honor to their Greek disciples and, from the beginning of the Empire, was commonly used for "astronomer" or "astrologer".(70) Also Bardesanus from Edessa (154-220 A.D.) uses it in this sense.(71) But, as M. Cumont writes me, one might hesitate as to whether in our inscription means a priest given to the study of astrology or simply a fortune-teller who sold horoscopes to his clients.

The word for "funerary stelë, , nefesh, is three times used in Palmyra for "soul",(72) once for "person, self"(73), and once, as here, for the funerary stele re

64. I.N. 32.56. Height 57.5, width 44 cm.
65. Cf. supra p. 32.
66. Studier, p. 90.
67. Cumont, Fouilles de Doura-Europos, pl. XXXII, XLVII and LV-Valentin Mueller, 86. Winckelmannsprogramm, Berlin 1927, P. 18-20-Studier, p. 27.
68. Cf. Simonsen, op. cit, p. 20-21, CIO; Studier, PS 197-maybe a son of our Bôrfâ-and on two busts first seen by Sobernheim in Qarjetein, cf. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, 1, p. 197, Ab and B.
69. Cf. Cumont, La Théologie solaire du paganisme romain, Paris 1909, p. 23-24.-Pauly Wissowa, Real-encyclopaedie, III, p. 2060.
70. Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités, V, p. 1096a-Pauly-Wissowa, Real 		    Encyclopaedie, loc. cit. The word "magos" has undergone a similar evolution, see Pauly Wissowa, s. v. p. 510.
71. See Nau, Bardesane L'astrologue : Le livre des lois des pays, Paris 1899 p. 37 f., 44 and 50.
72, Cantineau, Inventaire des inscriptions de Palmyre, VIIIA, nr. 6, line 3, p. 9; nr. 8, line 3, p. 10 and nr. 37b, line 1, p. 25.
73. In the Palmyrene part of the bilingual published in Syria, XIII, 1932, p. '279-89. Also in Nabatean, cf. Clermont-Ganneau, Recueil dArchéologie Orientale, VIII, p. 239.
74. Gottheil, Journal of the American Oriental Society, XXI, 1900, p. 110, nr. 4; Choix, pl. XXXI, 4; Studier, p. 112, PS 202. Cf. the so-called "stèles à nefesh", Mouterde, Syria, VI, 1925, p. 240-41.

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