IThera016

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 outside the enclosed area, east of the entrance to it.

Layout

The inscription runs in an orthogonal direction (except for the retrograde iota). The text is fairly legible and is set within a rectangular shape (placed about 8 cm from the top edge of the rock surface), as seen in other cases of anthroponyms in the same area (e.g., nos. 542 and 567). The rectangle itself measures 43 cm in width by 30 cm in height. The letters vary in height: beta at 18 cm, rho at 15 cm, upsilon at 12 cm, and san at 12 cm.

Execution: chiselled.

Palaeography

Letters of the archaic alphabet of Thera: beta: both bowls open. iota: with three rounded strokes. rho: with a rigid bowl. san: for the sibilant sound. upsilon: with diverging oblique strokes.

Provenance and Discovery

Place:Archaía Thíra (36.36349, 25.47804)

Date:Second half of the 7th - beginning of the 6th century BCE

Findspot:«ante portam aulae». Hiller, Suppl. p. 86; the editor read the inscription again in 1903, Hiller Suppl. p. 291

Coordinates:36.36200, 25.48072

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

Edition


Βῖρυς

Apparatus


Hiller: Βίρυς

Commentary

In the first reading of IG XII 3.365, Hiller identified the fourth letter as iota, interpreting the graffito as the name of a deity, Biride (for Iris, with the Laconian spelling of beta for digamma), worshipped at Amyclae. However, in the Suppl., the editor noted that the fourth letter appears to be upsilon, confirmed by autopsy, which suggests the inscription refers to an anthroponym. This name, though attested twice more on the island (with lacunae in both cases for the first letter), is not otherwise known in Greece.

Bibliography

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

Images

Photograph no. 29 (Inglese 2008). © 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.