Courtesy of the excavators

An excavator displays a fragment of a Greek inscription found at Omrit. The initial four letters that remain, “Aphro,” suggest that the inscription concerned Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. Aphrodite (or Roman Venus) was the mother of the Trojan hero Aeneas, from whom Augustus traced his descent; an inscription to Aphrodite, therefore, may have been especially appropriate in a temple dedicated to Augustus, the goddess’s “descendant.”