Roman inscribed gravestone from Scotland

This is the gravestone of Salamanes, who died at the age of fifteen. Professor Lawrence Keppie of the Hunterian Museum interprets the inscription to mean that the stone was dedicated by a father to his son. This is one of a group of funerary sculpted stones found at a farm and donated to the University of Glasgow in the early eighteenth century. They were all probably removed from the cemetery at Auchendavy or Bar Hill Roman fort and had been reused in the construction of a later building. Professor Keppie notes that the name is semitic so Salamanes and his son had travelled to Scotland from the middle east nearly two thousand years ago. This is testament to the multicultural nature of Roman Scotland with members of the army and accompanying civilians or traders, like Salamanes, coming from every corner of the Roman world.