IThera009

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 gaffito is located on a narrow vertical face of a small cliff on the western edge of the pavement level within the enclosed area. 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 orthograde (to be read from bottom to top).

Execution: chiselled.

Palaeography

Letters of the archaic alphabet of Thera: epsilon: vertical line pointing downwards, oblique bars

koppa: with extension of the vertical stroke within the bowl

omicron: smaller than the other letters

rho: rounded bowl

san: for sibilants.

Provenance and Discovery

Place:Archaía Thíra (36.36349, 25.47804)

Date:End of the 7th - beginning of the 6th century BCE

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

Coordinates:36.36198, 25.48065

Last recorded location: in situ; Last seen by A. Inglese in 2006 in situ; rubbing

Edition


Δεϙτε̄͂ρος

Apparatus


Hiller: Δεϙτερος (1899)

Commentary

Hiller, along with other scholars, believed that the inscription referenced Δεύτερος, meaning "second," and possibly connected it with the Idaean Dactyls, a group associated with divine craftsmanship. Other interpretations (Cook) have considered this to mean "reborn" and to be an epithet related to Koures, "the youthful Zeus," reflecting a younger aspect of the god. These interpretations rely on the assumption that the writer made a mistake, writing Δεϙτερος instead of Δεύτερος. However, if we assume the inscription is correct, an alternative interpretation could be Δεκτῆρος, the genitive of Δεκτήρ. Inglese (2008, p. 156) hypothesizes that this term could refer to a generic epithet or one associated with Hades. These interpretations remain speculative and open to debate due to the fragmentary nature of the inscription.

Bibliography

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

Images

Apograph of the entire inscribed surface (Inglese 2008, photo no. 25; fig. no. 2). © Greek Ministry of Culture / Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades. Reproduction authorized for this use only. Any further use requires permission

Composite image created from separate rubbings of the same inscription (rubbings inv. nos. EpiLab-rtv-rub-005, EpiLab-rtv-rub-042, 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

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.