IThera044

Findspot and Location

  • Country: Greece
  • Region: Santorini
  • Settlement: Ancient Thera
  • Repository: Archaeological site of Ancient Thera

Support

Material: stone.
Object type: rock face.

Layout

The inscription runs on two lines with an orthograde orientation (except for the first iota of Λυκείο̄ι, which is retrograde). In 2003 line 1 was legible only through the rubbing, although the last two letters are lost. Line 2 was also legible through direct autopsy, except for the last iota, which is restored from the rubbing. The inscription has a curvilinear arrangement and follows the edge of the rock surface: the theonym tends to descend, while the word τε͂δε rises upward.

Execution: chiselled.

Palaeography

Letters of the archaic alphabet of Thera: Epsilon: vertical stroke protruding at the bottom, oblique bars. Iota: three bars. Lambda: (l. 1) upper bar joins the vertical stroke at an acute angle, (l. 2) upper bar joins at a more open angle. Omicron: with an internal dot, smaller than the other letters. Upsilon: (l. 1) single oblique bar attached to the vertical stroke, (l. 2) both oblique bars attached at the same point on the vertical stroke.

Provenance and Discovery

Place:Archaía Thíra (36.36349, 25.47804)

Date:Line 1 was written at the beginning of the 6th century BCE, while line 2 appears to have been written before, around the half of the 7th century BCE

Findspot:Area of the Gymnasium of the Ephebes, Hiller, Suppl. p. 309

Coordinates:36.36173, 25.48150

Last recorded location: Last seen by A. Inglese in 2003 in situ; rubbing

Edition


a
1. Ἐπίλυϙ[ος]
2. Λυκείοι τε͂δε

b
[- - -]ΣΙΣ

Apparatus


a
Hiller: Ἀπόλ[λ]ων

b
Hiller: ΚΣΙ[- - -]

Commentary

For the epithet Λύκειος, it is possible to recall inscription no. 389; for other attestations of Apollo in the archaic period at Thera, see no. 356 and Inglese 2008, pp. 145-150. Although this is the only attestation with such a formula—it is the only one attested in the dative within a communicative context where erotic graffiti or anthroponyms followed by adjectives prevail—the dative Λυκείο̄ι referring to the god and the locative determination τεῖδε suggest considering this area, near the Gymnasium of the ephebes, as a place associated with an ancient cult of the deity. Moreover, it was near the gymnasium that Hiller traced the small altar featuring Apollo epiclesis. It is worth emphasizing that, although still lacking the dedicatory verb, this would be the oldest attestation of a dedication with a theonym in the dative: as Lazzarini recalls, this formula became widespread starting from the second half of the 6th century BCE; the oldest attestation is considered the dedication to Opheles on a Rhodian cup, dated to the mid-6th century, found in Cyrene and published by Gasperini.

Bibliography

To consult the full bibliography of the project, visit our Zotero library.

Images

Composite image created from separate rubbings of the same inscription (rubbings inv. nos. EpiLab-rtv-rub-007, EpiLab-rtv-rub-012, made in October 2003). © Greek Ministry of Culture / Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades. Reproduction authorized for this use only. Any further use requires permission

Apograph (Inglese 2008, fig. no. 4)

Editorial Team

Editor: Alessandra Inglese

Principal Investigator: Alessandra Inglese

Funder: CHANGES - Theme 5. Humanities and Cultural Heritage as Laboratories of Innovation and Creativity, funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU, Associazione Centro di Eccellenza DTC

Alessandra Inglese: original data collection and edition

Valentina Mignosa: encoding, editing metadata and geo data, website content creation, HTML transformation, website design and styling, interactive mapping implementation

Marika Griffo: rubbings digitisation

Simone Lucchetti: rubbings digitisation

Luigi Tessarolo: website construction, design and styling, interactive mapping implementation

Virgilio Costa: methodological and digital consultancy

Publication Details

Authority: ThERA (Theran Epigraphic Rubbings Archive) project

Licence: Licensed under a Creative Commons-Attribution 4.0 licence

Encoding model / validation: EpiDoc encoding model and validation framework adapted from ISicily

Download

To consult the full TEI EpiDoc XML source of this inscription, click here.