- Measurements and Technique: 53 x 25 x 28 cm. Plain.
- Provenance: Mount of Olives, Jerusalem.
- Description: Inner ledge on four sides.
- Lid: Missing. According to Dalman, however, it was found with a flat inserted sliding lid.
- Inscription: OPKANOΣ NIKOΛAOY Orkanos (son of) Nikolaos'.
- Bibliography: Dalman, 1903, p. 30, No. 11; Clermont-Ganneau, p.172; Klein, p. 60, No.174; Thomsen, p. 196, No. 196; CIJ 11, p. 271, No. 1279.

Comments: Inventory No. VI:1. As a personal name, OPKANOΣ is elsewhere unknown, and should therefore be understood as a transliteration from Hebrew/Aramaic "hw rqnws" (see Dalman, 1903, p. 30; Thomsen, p.196; CIJ 11, p.271; Ilan, 1987a, p.19), which is not a classical Greek name, but in the form of ´Yρκanος well represented in Eretz Israel from the second century B.C.E. onward. Josephus mentions five different people (all Jewish) bearing this name, and the rabbinical literature adds another four (cf. Ilan, 1987a, pp. 1-2, 19)[1]. The only epigraphical evidence for this name, either in Hebrew or Greek, is our ossuary No. 13. Apart from this example, the name is missing in CIJ I-II and CPJ I-III, but is now found in Hebrew in Qumran (4QMishmarot Ca = 4Q322 frg. 2, line 6), referring to one of the Hasmonean kings. Against that, the identification of the name "hrqnws" of Pharaoh's servant in the Aramaic Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran (= 1 Q20 Col. XX, lines 8, 21, 24) with the name Hyrcan remains uncertain. In contrast, the father's name NIKOΛAOΣ is well attested as a Greek name[2], but seldom for a Jewish person[3], and seems to be the only case in which it appears on an ossuary inscription. Therefore, it seems unlikely to us that the inscription is a forgery, as Clermont-Ganneau has suggested (p. 172), because in this case it would be necessary to explain why the forger used such an unusual pair of names.

[1] The name ´Yρκanος does not appear in LGPN I or IIIA, and only once in each LGPN II, p.438 (IG II², No. 4700 + SEG 21 [1965], p. 279, No. 799 [first century B.C.E.?]) and Preisigke, p. 451 (SB I, p. 293, No. 4206, line 19 [first century B.C.E.]). In both cases, the bearers of the name could be of Jewish origin.
[2] Preisigke, p. 234; LGPN I, p. 336; LGPN II, pp. 336-337; LGPN IIIA, p. 325.
[3] Josephus mentions only Nikolaos of Damascus, and no Jewish bearer of the name. In the New Testament the only Nikolaos is identified as a proselyte from Antioch (Acts 6:5). In two Jewish inscriptions from Egypt a Nikolaos is mentioned, CIJ II, No. 1509 (the reading is uncertain; for the reading Nikolaos, see CPJ III, No. 1509); CIJ II, No. 1531 (= CPJ III, No. 1531), and a third one from Larisa in Thessalie (CIJ I, No. 707).

Zitat aus: Fritz/Deines, Catalogue of the Jewish Ossuaries in the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology, IEJ 49, 1999, 222-241.

Ossuary No. 13 Greek inscription on front