© 2015 American Schools of Oriental Research. BASOR 373 (2015): 49–68. he Late Antique Church at Tall al-ʿUmayrī East: New Evidence for the Jafnid Family and the Cult of St. Sergius in Northern Jordan George Bevan, Greg Fisher, and Denis Genequand he discovery of a new church inscription referring to the Jafnid (or “Ghassānid”) leader al- Mundhir in northern Jordan provides new insights into the activities of the family in the region and is a valuable addition to the epigraphic corpus concerning the Jafnids. he initial publication of the inscription in ADAJ, as part of the excavation report, was necessarily limited in its analyt- ical scope. Here we take the opportunity to build on those initial indings to place the inscription in its epigraphic context, in the context of the activities of the Jafnid family, including their public connection to expressions of Christian piety in Provincia Arabia and elsewhere. Finally, we ofer a hypothesis about what the title accorded to al-Mundhir on the inscription might reveal about the process of “imperial conirmation” for Arab allies in general and for the Jafnids in particular. George Bevan: Department of Classics, Queen’s Uni- versity, 505 Watson Hall, Kingston K7L 3N6, Canada, bevan@queensu.ca Greg Fisher: College of the Humanities, Carleton Uni- versity, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa K1S 5B6, Canada, greg.isher@carleton.ca Denis Genequand: Department of Genetics and Evolution, University of Geneva, 12 rue Gustave-Revilliod, 1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland, denis.genequand@unige.ch Introduction I n early 2009, archaeologists from the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, led by Ahmad al-Shami, con- ducted a rescue excavation at Tall al-ʿUmayrī East in southern Amman to investigate a site uncovered dur- ing widening of the airport highway. Preliminary results were published in Arabic in the Annual of the Depart- ment of Antiquities of Jordan (al-Shami 2010). he exca- vators identiied a substantial basilica-style church, based around elements of an earlier Roman building, abutted by a number of other structures. Perhaps the most excit- ing ind from the excavation was a Greek inscription in front of the apse, 3.5 m in length, recording the dedica- tion of the church and referring to a certain “Alamounda- ros.” his igure is to be equated with al-Mundhir, leader of the most prominent of the Arab clients of the Roman Empire, the so-called Jafnids, between a.d. 568/569 and 581/582. his identiication is strengthened by the mul- tiple mentions of St. Sergius in the inscription, a martyr saint closely connected to al-Mundhir and his family. While the main center of the Sergius cult was at Ruṣāfa in northern Syria, the church at Tall al-ʿUmayrī East is very close to another church of St. Sergius at Nitl, near Madaba, also linked to the Jafnids, as well as in the gen- eral area where most of the epigraphic evidence for the Jafnids has been found. Since its discovery, the mosaic inscription from Tall al-ʿUmayrī East has received only limited analysis. he sole illustrated account remains the excavation report in ADAJ (al-Shami 2010: esp. igs. 10, 11); it was also briely discussed by Feissel (BÉ 2012: 488) and has now received a new reading, a French translation, and a short com- mentary (Gatier in press). In this article, we build on these eforts by providing the irst English reading of the inscription and further situating it within the context of the current understanding of the Jafnid family and their relationship with the Roman Empire.