Portals of the Montanist New Jerusalem: The Discovery of Pepouza and Tymion

In the first decade of the third century C.E., a Christian writer named Apollonius wrote a tract denouncing an early Christian prophetic movement flourishing in Phrygia at the time. The movement later came to be known as Montanism, named after one of its three founders. According to Apollonius, Montanus was the movement's original organizer, establishing its rules of conduct and ecclesiastical structure (Apollon., ap. Eus., H.E. 5.18.2). Among other strategies, Montanus gave the name "Jerusalem" to Pepouza and Tymion, two settlements in Phrygia, wanting people to gather there from everywhere (5.18.2). In time Pepouza became both the administrative "headquarters" of Montanism and a pilgrimage site for Montanists living outside the region.

Despite the significance of Pepouza and Tymion for the history of Montanism and of early Christianity in Asia Minor, until now, neither the location of Pepouza nor that of Tymion has been identified. In the course of the past 125 years, scholarly investigations have narrowed the geographic parameters within which Pepouza and Tymion were presumed to have been located, and a number of reasonable suggestions as to their probable location have been made. Search-ing for Pepouza has been the archaeological equivalent of searching for the proverbial "needle in a haystack." In particular, two archaeological remnants of the past (an inscription and a rock-cut monastery) proved invaluable for identify-ing the holy city of the Montanists.

The Tymion Inscription

On August 7, 1998, Mr. Kazim Akbiyikogilu, the director of the Usak Archaeological Museum in Turkey, bought a marble slab containing a bilingual inscription. ¹ The Greek text (ll. 1-5) proclaims that the Latin text (ll. 16-18) is an exact copy of the original on display in the colonnaded gallery surrounding the Baths of Trajan (in Rome) and that the copy had been officially checked and verified. Such copying and checking was the normal procedure by which inscrip-tions recording imperial responses to petitions by cities or other settlements in the provinces were authenticated and authorized. In due time, the inscribed monument containing the imperial rescript would be erected in a prominent location in the settlement or settlements which had made the petition. The Latin text reveals that the inhabitants (coloni) of Tymium (= Greek Tumion; i.e., Tymion) had complained about unjust taxes (l. 12).

The complete listing of Septimius Severus' titles on the Tymion inscription (ll. 7-9) shows that the emperors responded to the coloni's petition some time after 195. Indeed, from the titles of Septimius' sons (ll. 6-7, 9-10), it is clear that the response was promulgated between April 200, when M. Aurelius Antoninus Augustus received the title Pius, and 209 or 210, when Publius Septimius Geta officially became an Augustus.

The year in which the imperial response to the coloni of Tymion was formulated is recorded, as was the Roman custom, by naming the consuls then in office. While, because part of the left side of the stone is missing, it is impossible to be precise about the day and month of the official response to the coloni's petition, there is little doubt about the year. The petition was answered "in the consulship of our lords Antoninus Pius and Geta Caesar" (ll. 6-7). Septimius Severus' sons were joint consuls only twice. The first time in 205, the second in 208. Theoretically, either year is possible, but the later date is almost certainly to be ruled out as the inscription does not (as would have been normal) record that this was their second joint consulship.

The words coloniis (l. 10) and proc<urator> noster (l. 11) clearly reveal that Tymion was a settlement situated on an imperial estate. By the end of the second century C.E., there were vast imperial estates in Phrygia, their arable land farmed by coloni Caesaris who were rent...