IThera006

Findspot and Location

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

Support

Material: stone.
Object type: rock face.

The inscription is located in the archaeological context called 'Agora of the Gods' by the first excavators. The graffito is located on the horizontal plane of a cliff 1.30 m from the northern wall. This complex is located to the west of the temple of Apollo Carnaeus, from which it is separated by the main road.

Layout

The graffito, which is difficult to read, is written from right to left. The inscription has a length of 35 cm.

Execution: chiselled.

Palaeography

Letters of the archaic alphabet of Thera: Koppa: with an extended horizontal stroke within the bowl

Epsilon: vertical stroke protruding at the bottom, oblique bars

Omicron: smaller than the other letters

Rho: sharp bowl

San: for sibilants.

Provenance and Discovery

Place:Archaía Thíra (36.36349, 25.47804)

Date:Late 8th - early 7th century BCE.

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

Coordinates:36.36202, 25.48057

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

Edition


Ϙο̄ρε̄ς

Apparatus


Hiller: Ϙο(υ)ρε̄́ς

Commentary

The graffito is difficult to read and is inscribed in retrograde on the horizontal surface of a rock, located approximately 1.30 meters from the northern wall that delimits the perimeter area. The inscription measures 35 cm in length, and the letters vary in size, with some measuring: koppa at 6 cm, omicron at 13 cm, and san at 9 cm. The inscription is on the same paved surface as two other attestations of the term ϙο̄ρε̄ς (nos. 350 ϙο̄ρης and 355 ϙο̄ρε̄ς). However, doubts remain about the interpretation of the same term in inscription no. 371 (ϙο̄ρας), located outside the perimeter area. From a paleographic perspective, key features include the use of epsilon, which is consistent with the style of no. 354, used to denote the closed eta, and the koppa with a vertical stroke extending into the bowl, similar to no. 354. The rho, however, has a sharp bowl. These paleographic characteristics suggest the graffito belongs to an earlier phase and may date back to the late 8th or early 7th century BCE.

Bibliography

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

Images

Photograph (Inglese 2008 no. 21). © 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.