IThera080

Findspot and Location

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

Support

Material: stone.
Object type: rock face.

Although the rock has been identified, the inscription, located 2.10 m from no. 589 and 1.60 m from the terrace wall, is almost illegible. The rocky surface measures approximately 30 × 45 cm; at about 12 cm from the upper edge, the upper ends of some letters are barely visible, but it is impossible to identify them with certainty.

Layout

Execution: chiselled.

Palaeography

Letters of the archaic alphabet of Thera: According to Hiller's indications in Suppl., if the last letter is a four-stroke sigma, it would suggest a 5th-century BCE dating, as San remained in use for the sibilant sound for a long time. If, however, the letter is a four-stroke iota, this script is not particularly attested in the Archaic period on the island. Archaizing features in epsilon, which appears to have a protruding lower stroke and oblique bars.

Provenance and Discovery

Place:Archaía Thíra (36.36349, 25.47804)

Date:Archaic period

Findspot:«ante muri magni prope epheborum gymnasium siti partem eam, quae ex oblongis lapidibus constat, prope foramen rectangulum», Hiller 1896; read again by Hiller in Suppl. p. 312.

Coordinates:36.36179, 25.48075

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

Edition


γένος

Apparatus


Edition after Hiller 1896, who also suggested the reading Γενώι

Commentary

Although the rock surface has been identified, the inscription, positioned 2.40 m above and 1.60 m from the retaining wall, is almost completely illegible. The upper terminals of some letters are faintly visible, but no clear reading is possible. In IG XII 3.593, Hiller read a vertical stroke followed by -εριοι and noted in the commentary “a feminine noun in -εριώι?”, adding “De Leris does not suggest anything, although in later times at Thera the goddess Parthenos Leria was worshipped (around 440 BCE).” (our trans.) In Suppl. 1451 he writes: “I now doubt my previous reading. It may be γένος (or Γενώι?).” According to Hiller’s notes in Suppl., the final letter is a sigma with four strokes, which could suggest a 5th-century BCE date, as the sibilant is sometimes written with four strokes (and san is still attested in early 5th-century inscriptions). However, if the final letter is an iota with four strokes, its form is not especially typical for the Archaic period in the island. There are nonetheless signs of archaising tendencies, such as an epsilon with a descending vertical stroke and oblique bars.

Bibliography

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

Images

No images available.

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.