For the prayer of cometissa Mary.

 

The exact provenance of the inscription is impossible to determine. The stone was used for the construction of a gazebo for Selâmet Giray and was probably brought from somewhere in Mountainous Crimea. The two closest sites to Bakhchisaray, with Early Byzantine buildings, are Tepe-Kermen and Bakla. Our inscription is a typical Early Byzantine dedication, probably from some church, and it is the only Early Byzantine in date in Mountainous Crimea. The possible candidates for original location can be Bakla, Eski-Kermen and Mangup.

On the formula, see Introduction IV.3.B.b. The name Mary occurs also in V 62 and V 235. Because the stone is fully preserved (which is confirmed by the symmetrical position crucis monogrammaticae), the letters КОМ can only represent an abbreviation. In Byzantine epigraphy, such an abbreviation usually signifies κώμη "village" (here clearly inappropriate) or "comes" (Avi-Yоnah 1940, 77–78), although this term is never applied to women, thus the remaining possibility is to interpret it as "cometissa." The term, which means "a wife of comes" is known since the Vth century (see Sophocles, s.v.).

Crux monogrammatica is also known in Crimea from V 44 (IV-Vth century), V 294 (IV-Vth century), and V 316 (770 C.E.); cf. also MAMA I 371; Beševliev 1964, № 7, 41, 93, 96, 116, 241. The script most closely resembles that of V 56, V 57, V 58, V 59. Alpha with broken crossbar occurs in dated inscriptions of Cherson{esos} before the early Xth century, however all inscriptions using the formula "for a prayer" belong to the Early Byzantine period. The use of marble also supports this date.