National Archaeological Museum of Naples

Of particular interest is the section called “Egitto Pompei. Dall’Oriente”, opened in 2016 and dedicated to artefacts from eastern religions in the Roman world. Among other things, the room contains several Jewish objects that had long been held in the museum’s archives. The epigraph slabs dating from the 4^th and 5^th centuries provide crucial historical evidence, and were found in a burial area close to today’s Corso Malta. Other tombstones come from the Roman catacombs of Monteverde; another, unearthed in Brusciano, bears the oldest inscription in the west known to use the term “rabbi”.  Alongside names and words in Hebrew, the stone fragments and two oil lamps on display also bear typical symbols of Jewish identity, such as the menorah, the lulav, the citron fruit and the shofar.