Endnote 7 – Earliest Christian Inscription

Apparently, Ramsay so wanted to describe Avercius visiting a particular emperor and empress that he translated the Greek for “kingdom” as “king.” Ramsay claimed that he originally saw the letter eta on the stone at the end of the verse, that this letter was somehow broken when the stone was shipped from Turkey to Rome, and that he lost his original squeeze of the inscription. But in fact, the stone shows no indication of breakage in that spot, and the on-site notes and drawings by Ramsay’s colleague prove that there never was an eta.