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A considerable group of Old Syriac inscriptions are funerary in nature and mark the burial sites of members of the Edessene elites during the first three centuries CE. A representative of this material is the earliest surviving dated inscription, which was likely put up in the year 6 CE to mark the tomb of the governor of Birtha (now Birecik), a strategically placed settlement on the Euphrates (As 55). As frequently occurs in Old Syriac inscriptions, the text is reported in the first person by the dedicatee; his name was Zarbiyan and, in the inscription, he declares: “I made this tomb for myself and for Ḥalwiya, lady of my household, and for my children.” References to the family of the deceased are a common feature of Syriac funerary inscriptions, which often include portraits of the deceased together with family members, either in stone relief or in mosaic. Family ties are emphasized in these inscriptions, but especially important was any eventual connection of the deceased with members of the royal family. In the inscription of Zarbiyan, the deceased introduces himself not just as the “governor of Birtha,” but also as the “tutor of ‘Awidallat son of Ma‘nu son of Ma‘nu,” who can arguably be identified as the son of the king of Edessa Ma‘nu IV (d. 13 CE). Zarbiyan’s role of “tutor” (mrabbyōnō) is probably best understood as a special guardianship position that he had for a member of the royal family; this role may have equivalents in the Hatrene Aramaic mrabbyana, as is attested in a dedicatory inscription put up in the first half of the third century (H203:2; Vattioni 1981; Aggoula 1991; Beyer 1998), and in the Nabataean cognate rbw, used for the tutor of a third-century king Gadimat, “king of the Thanouēnoi,” in the context of a Greek bilingual inscription in which the word is translated as tropheus in Greek (RES 1097). According to Millar, this title indicates the extension of Hellenistic courtly culture into these kingdoms (Sartre 1979; Millar 1993: 431–434).