IThera021

Findspot and Location

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

Support

Material: stone.
Object type: rock face.

According to Hiller, the graffito is located among the group of rocks in front of the Temple of Apollo Karneios, at the edge of the large plateau of the Karneia, facing the great terrace wall.

Layout

Execution: chiselled.

Palaeography

Letters of the archaic alphabet of Thera: Epsilon: featuring non-protruding vertical strokes with oblique bars. Aspiration: represented as a closed rectangular with orizontal crossbar. Iota: with three distinct bars. San: used for the sibilant sound.

Provenance and Discovery

Place:Archaía Thíra (36.36349, 25.47804)

Date:Archaic period

Findspot:

Coordinates:36.36191, 25.48094

Last recorded location: non vidi (lost?)

Edition


1. hερμᾶς
2. [- - -] ἄριστος (Hiller)

Apparatus

No critical notes available.

Commentary

The graffito is located near other similar inscriptions close to the temple and may belong to a group of graffiti referencing the same area of worship. According to Hiller’s edition, the inscription consists of two lines: one written retrograde, the other inverted. There may be a connection between the inscription and the cult of Hermes, which is attested in later inscriptions from Thera, particularly in association with the gymnasium and young male initiates, often in connection with the name of Herakles. If Hiller’s interpretation of the text as a reference to the god Hermes is accepted, this would represent the only known occurrence of the name in the Archaic period. For a comprehensive overview, see Inglese 2008, pp. 192-196.

Bibliography

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

Images

No images available.

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.