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In addition to being used in funerary settings, Old Syriac had an important royal status within the kingdom of Edessa, as can be gauged from its use on coins (see below) and from official dedicatory inscriptions. Not unlike Palmyra and Hatra, Edessa was rich in monuments and sculptures that celebrated the royal family and members of the local elites; an important trace of dedicatory statuary survives in the form of a column that still stands on Edessa’s citadel. As its inscription makes clear, the column once held a statue of the Edessene queen (or princess) Shalmat, daughter of the crown prince Ma‘nu, and was set up in the first half of the third century CE by a high-ranking official in the kingdom (As 1). The inscription also attests to the use, in Edessa, of the Middle-Persian title paṣgriba, usually understood as “crown prince,” which can be compared to the same title in Hatra (Gnoli 2002; Mosig-Walburg 2018; see also CIL IV 1797, the Latin funerary inscription, set up in Rome, of the Edessene “crown prince,” filius rex, Abgar Phraates); at the same time, this inscription demonstrates the continuing importance of the royal family after Edessa was made a Roman colonia in the early third century (Millar 1993: 476–477).