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Item Number: 100265
Title: Malta Sotterranea: Studies of its Early Christian and Jewish Sepulchral Art
Author: Becker, Erich
Price: Not Available
ISBN: 9789993272472
Description: translated and edited by Katrin Fenech. Sta Venera: Midsea, 2009. 23cm., hardcover, 255pp. illus. Becker’s studies of Malta’s early Christian and Jewish sepulchral art are very well researched and exceptionally thorough. Most authors who later wrote on the same subject quote or refer to Becker in one way or another. Yet, due to the difficulties poised by the language, many of Becker’s important findings and results remain unknown to this date, except where they have been plagiarised Most references to Becker’s works today are based on incorrect translations and he is sometimes quoted for things he never said. In this new translation the author has opted for clarity, accuracy and shorter sentence structures that enable the reader to follow Becker’s detailed descriptions. However, Becker’s choice of terminology has been scrupulously translated. Every chapter contains endnotes by the translator that provide further explanations, updates or translations. The original version is littered with quotes in Latin, Greek, English, French, Italian and Hebrew, none of which Becker translated. For this English translation, these quotes have been, translated in the endnotes. Furthermore, when dealing with the inscriptions found in Malta, Becker often refers to inscriptions published in the Corpus Inscriptiones Latinarum (CIL) and in A. A. Caruana’s 1882 publication. As neither of these two publications is easily available in Malta, the texts are also provided in the endnotes, together with their translations where possible. Only some plans of the various hypogea described by Becker were available when he was in Malta. The plans published later by Caruana and Buhagiar, to which Becker simply refers, have also been added and corrected where possible. The history and development of the Maltese Jewish and early Christian burial grounds is by no means a closed chapter today. The reader must bear in mind that many more hypogea have been discovered since Becker’s 1913 publication, in Malta and abroad, and that many more papers have been published since. These new discoveries have added considerably to our knowledge. It is hoped that with this English translation of Malta Sotterranea, Becker’s results and observations will form a more active part of the discussion. (Maltese Social Studies Series, 17)

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