IThera068

Findspot and Location

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

Support

Material: stone.
Object type: rock face.

Layout

The graffiti are located on the same rock surface but in different positions. Αἴνησις θαλερός is written retrograde, and is arranged on two lines near the lower part of the rock (the first word is positioned 73 cm from the upper edge, and the second at 85 cm). Μενιάδας πρᾶτος, also on two lines but irregularly boustrophedon, is placed to the left of the previous lines and runs vertically along the left margin of the rock surface, which was used as a guideline.

Execution: chiselled.

Palaeography

Letters of the archaic alphabet of Thera: Alpha (l. 3): regular bars. Alpha (l. 4): left stroke divergent, diagonal crossbar. Epsilon (l. 5): vertical stroke protruding at the bottom, oblique bars. Eta: represented as a closed rectangular with orizontal crossbar. Theta: circle with cross-shaped bars inside. Iota (l. 3): three curvilinear bars. Iota (l. 5): three bars. Pi (l. 6): hook-shaped. Rho (l. 6): angular bowl. San: used for the sibilant sound.

Provenance and Discovery

Place:Archaía Thíra (36.36349, 25.47804)

Date:Second half of the 7th century BCE

Findspot:Hiller 1896; read again by Hiller in 1899 (Suppl. p. 311).

Coordinates:36.36192, 25.48088

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

Edition


1. [- - -]Μh[- - -]
2. [- - -]ΝΕ[- - -]
3. Αἴνησις
4. θαλερ̣ό̣ς̣
5. Μενιάδας
6. πρᾶτος
7. [- - -]ΑΣΑ[- - -]

Apparatus


Edition based on Inglese 2008
Inglese 2008 suggests that πρᾶτος could be also interpreted as a name (Πρᾶτος, Doric form for Πρῶτος).

Commentary

Πρᾶτος (Doric for Πρῶτος) as a proper name is attested in a couple of cases in Greece (in Acarnania and Kamarina; the form Πρῶτος is more widespread). As the first element of an anthroponym, it appears both in inscription no. 1446 (Πρατόλοϙhος) and in the inscription engraved on a «elongated tablet of black volcanic stone» (Hiller), no. 1616 (Πρατοθέμιος). In our case, Πρᾶτος could be considered either an anthroponym or an adjective; the latter hypothesis is possible based on the fact that it is used in the superlative πράτιστος in both inscription no. 540 (line 3), and in the inscription no. 1324. Moreover, the first anthroponym is followed by the adjective, so this could be a similar case. The name Αἴνησις occurs once in Thera; it is attested once in Rhodes (at Kamiros, 190 BCE). The form Αἰνησις is recorded in Crete (one instance from the 1st century BCE) and in Kos (one instance from 200 CE). It is worth noting that in Thera there is another case where the name has Αἰνησ- as its first element (no. 1422 Αἰνησίλα). The adjective θαλερός (flourishing, vigorous) has no other parallels in the Theran documentation. Μενιάδας is attested in this form only in Thera, whereas it is more common in Greece in the Ionic form Μενιάδης.

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.