IThera028

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 orthograde and is chiselled on a rock surface approximately 12 cm from the base of the large terrace wall, facing north. The rock surface measures 2.75 m in height and 1.90 m in length. The inscription is located 1.15 m from the lower edge of the stone.

Layout

Execution: chiselled.

Palaeography

Letters of the archaic alphabet of Thera: Eta: represented as a closed rectangular with orizontal crossbar. San: used for a sibilant sound. Samek: for [dz], with a protruding vertical stroke. Upsilon: single oblique bar attached to the vertical stroke.

Provenance and Discovery

Place:Archaía Thíra (36.36349, 25.47804)

Date:6th century BCE

Findspot:«ante murum altum prope epheborum gymnasium» Hiller, Suppl. p. 86

Coordinates:36.36180, 25.48067

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

Edition


Ζηύς

Apparatus


Hiller: Ζηύς

Commentary

According to Jeffery, the inscription can be dated to the late 8th century BCE. Jeffery and Guarducci observed that the use of samek for [dz] in the city's early inscriptions was previously limited to the name of Zeus; a recent discovery suggests it may also appear in Ζεύχσιος. The inscription was found at the base of a terrace wall, an area rich in later inscriptions, square or rectangular cuttings, and two other Archaic inscriptions (no. 589 and no. 595, the latter now lost). This evidence suggests that in the Archaic period this lower area functioned similarly to the upper terrace, sharing cultic significance and the presence of personal names.

Bibliography

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

Images

Rubbing inv. no. EpiLab-rtv-rub-004 (October 2003). © Greek Ministry of Culture / Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades. Reproduction authorized for this use only. Any further use requires permission

Apograph (Inglese 2008, fig. no. 10)

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

Luigi Tessarolo: website construction, design and styling, interactive mapping implementation

Virgilio Costa: methodological and digital consultancy

Publication Details

Authority: Inscriptions from Thera

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.