IThera023

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, which was not found during Inglese's survey, is described by Hiller as orthograde and consisting of a single line. In the apograph, the editor also records a few surviving letters from a second line but does not propose any reading. Line 1 features the epithet of Zeus Hikesios, likely followed by the beginning of an anthroponym, presumably that of the dedicator.

Layout

The inscription is located on the same rock face as no. 582, at a distance of approximately 85 cm. It is still identifiable but somewhat difficult to read, even through the rubbing, especially in its final section. The koppa (9 cm) is written without the extension in the bowl, but there is a trace of an internal dot, likely left by the tool used to engrave the circle. The omicron (approximately 4 cm) and the rho (12 cm) are distinguishable, while the upsilon (10 cm) and the san are more difficult to read.

Execution: chiselled.

Palaeography

Letters of the archaic alphabet of Thera: Alpha: regular bars, oblique crossbar

Koppa: lacking the extension within the bowl

Omicron: smaller than the other letters

Rho: round bowl

San: used as a sibilant

Provenance and Discovery

Place:Archaía Thíra (36.36349, 25.47804)

Date:Archaic period

Findspot:«infra epheborum gymnasium in clivo montis urbani». Hiller, Suppl. p. 292

Coordinates:36.36149, 25.48188

Last recorded location: non vidi (lost?)

Edition


[h]ικέσιος Ουνο[- - -] (Hiller)

Apparatus

No critical notes available.

Commentary

The graffito was not located during the survey conducted by Inglese in 2002–2003. According to Hiller, the inscription was preceded by a few surviving letters, although he does not propose a reading. Line 1 contains the epithet of Zeus, Hikesios, probably followed by the beginning of a personal name, likely that of the dedicator. The epithet also appears in IG XII.3.403. See nos. 350 and 351 for other occurrences of Zeus in the context of the Agora of the Gods, even if only invoked through epithets. Supplication was a “more urgent request for help,” (Bettinetti , pp. 172 ff.), generally performed by falling at the feet of the person approached as a hiketes, embracing their knees, and touching their chin or hand. The scholar adds that this rituality was the same in religious contexts, particularly in the veneration of cult statues. The hiketeia ritual required direct physical contact. The ritual “was associated with the cult statue through a series of gestures and attitudes, such as running and throwing oneself at its feet, kneeling, sitting beside it, or embracing the divine image.” These details may provide insight into the type of rituality linked, even in Thera, to the hikesios graffiti that feature adjacent cuttings, which may have served as receptacles for some form of marker of the deity to whom the supplication was addressed.

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.