Tumultus

--- CONTENT ---
Tumultus Iudaicus was the Roman language system used in the city of Cyrene, at the beginning of the rule of Hadrian, to document on inscriptions on restored public buildings and streets the uprising of the Jews (“Diaspora Uprising”) from 115 to 117 AD as the reason for the now repaired destruction.

Historical background
In addition to large settlement areas of the Jews in Babylonia and Egypt, there were also numerous diaspora communities in the Syrian region and northern Mesopotamia at the time of Emperor Trajan. Further communities existed in Cyrenaica (now East Libya) and in almost all major port and trading cities of the Eastern Mediterranean and of course also in Rome.

During his campaign against the Parthians, Emperor Trajan came under heavy military pressure when in 115 AD the “diaspora uprising” of the Jews broke out in Mesopotamia, Syria, Cyprus, Egypt and Cyrenaica. The connections and goals of these uprisings are largely unclear, but they tied up strong military forces of Trajan, so that he had to accept reconquests of the Parthians. The riots could not be ended until 117 AD, in the year of Trajan's death, in the east of Lusius Quietus and in North Africa by Quintus Marcius Turbo. The new emperor Hadrian was confronted only with minor uprisings of the Jews, but had to do great reconstruction work and recolonization, because in its extent in terms of destruction and death, this lesser-known second Jewish-Roman war (according to Lusius Quietus in many languages also called Kitos war) was quite comparable with the first course of weapons (“Jewish War”, 66-70 AD) and the third military conflict (“Bar Kochba Uprising”, 132-134 AD). Cassius Dio reported hundreds of thousands of deaths in Cyrenaica and Egypt, as well as in Cyprus.

Destruction and reconstruction in Cyrene

In the Roman province of Cyrenaica, the leader of the uprising was a Jew named Lukuas (also Luke or Andrew), who may have had a Messianic motivation. He left behind great destruction of temples and public buildings in Cyrene and carried the uprising on to Egypt. Possibly, the destruction in the city is also partly due to their reconquest by the Romans.

In a recent work, F. Ziosi analyzes eleven known inscriptions from Cyrene, which originate from Roman milestones, building parts and dedication panels. The largely identical texts or text fragments are written in Latin, three of them additionally in Greek. They name Emperor Hadrian as the cause of the reconstruction after the destruction of the tumultus Iudaicus, i.e. the diaspora uprising of the Jews. The author mainly investigates the questions why in the predominantly Greek-inhabited region the inscriptions are kept in Latin, why the reconstruction is so fast – the inscriptions are on 118 and 1