IThera008

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 written on the horizontal surface of a rock within the fenced area, but upside down in relation to the entrance. 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 is written from right to left (except for iota).

Execution: chiselled.

Palaeography

Letters of the archaic alphabet of Thera: Alpha: divaricated left stroke, oblique crossbar Beta: open

Epsilon: vertical line pointing downwards, oblique bars

Iota: with three bars

Omicron: smaller than the other letters

Rho: rigid bowl

San: for sibilant.

Provenance and Discovery

Place:Archaía Thíra (36.36349, 25.47804)

Date:First half of the 7th century BCE

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

Coordinates:36.36199, 25.48067

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

Edition


Βορεαῖος

Apparatus


Hiller: Βορεαῖος

Commentary

For the interpretation, reference is made to SGDI 4714: “Adjective to be supplemented with a substantive.” Cook associated the inscription with Zeus, while Hiller identified Boreas as a reference to the wind god. Guarducci dates the graffito to the late 8th or early 7th century BCE and interprets βορεαῖος as an adjective of an elliptical ἄνεμος (“wind”). According to Guarducci, this would represent the personification of Boreas—the north wind that brought cool relief from the summer heat in the Aegean. Other scholars, however, have suggested that Boreas was worshipped as an independent deity. In this context, the mention of Boreas may signify his role as a divine force associated with weather and the local climate. The cult of Boreas is attested in various parts of Greece, with notable examples at Plataea and Athens, where sacrifices were offered to him following a divine intervention involving a destructive wind that aided the Athenians during the Persian Wars. The spread of the cult—including attestations at Argos and in Macedonia—further underscores the significance of Boreas as a wind deity. For a broader overview, see Inglese 2008, pp. 151–153.

Bibliography

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

Images

Photograph (Inglese 2008 no. 24). © 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.