History and Provenance

The slab belonged to the collection of the German-French archaeologist Wilhelm Froehner, purchased by the Bibliotheque nationale de France in 1878. When the collection was studied and the inscription published in 1930, a note recorded that the stone had been "sent from Nazareth" in 1878. That note is the sole basis for the Nazareth attribution; the object has no excavation record and no controlled archaeological context.

The Greek text prescribes penalties for tomb violation and the displacement of bodies, language that scholars connected variously to imperial concern for graves in the eastern provinces and, more speculatively, to disturbances surrounding early Christian claims about Jesus. Because the findspot and date were uncertain, the inscription supported a wide range of interpretations for nearly a century, and it remained in Paris as part of the national collections, where it can still be studied.