IThera002

Findspot and Location

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

Support

Material: stone.
Object type: rock face.

The graffito is placed horizontally on a rock in the area bounded by polygonal walls in the shape of a horseshoe (see IThera001). The name of the deity is quite close to the prominence of the eastern wall and runs from left to right. To the left of the samek there is a hole carved into the stone. Most of these holes are square and have the names of the gods written above, below and to the side; Guarducci considers them to be "sacred stones or hearths (eschàrai)", for another hypothesis see Inglese 2008, Chapter 2 and Part III.

Layout

Execution: chiselled.

Palaeography

Letters of the archaic alphabet of Thera: epsilon: downward slanting vertical stroke

san: sibilant

samek: for [dz], with a protruding vertical stroke

ypsilon: with a single slanting stroke attached to the vertical stroke.

Provenance and Discovery

Place:Archaía Thíra (36.36349, 25.47804)

Date:Late 8th - early 7th century B.C.

Findspot:«Intra aedificium perantiquum, quod prope Apollinis Carnei templum meridiem fere versus situm est». Hiller, Suppl. p. 86

Coordinates:36.36201, 25.48061

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

Edition


Ζεύς

Apparatus


Hiller: Ζεύς

Commentary

The inscription is placed among other names of deity. Within this enclosed area, only three anthroponyms are likely present (see IThera001 and IThera086). The deity in Thera during the archaic period was also worshiped through the only epithets: hικέσιος is recorded in the now-lost graffito IG XII 3, 402 and 403, located, according to Hiller’s indications, beyond the gymnasium of the ephebes, near the farthest part of the promontory. Another occurrence is in the fragmentary inscription no. 404. Numerous other attestations of the deity, including just the epithets, are found in the city and are dated to a later period. Particularly noteworthy, because inscribed on a rock, are the dedications to Zeus Melichios in no. 406 and the dedication to Zeus in inscription no. 375, where the deity’s name is written as Ζηνό(ς) and followed by Π (Πολιέος or Πατρώιου according to Hiller). Also in this case the theonym is accompanied by a square hole.

Bibliography

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

Images

Photograph (Inglese 2008, no. 18). © Greek Ministry of Culture / Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades. Reproduction authorized for this use only. Any further use requires permission

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.