IThera095

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 located in the archaeological context called 'Agora of the Gods' by the first excavators.

Layout

The inscription is orthograde and located within the enclosed area to the west of the Temple of Apollo Karneios. It is inscribed from top to bottom, placed vertically on the right section (approximately 30 cm in height) of a rock face situated west of inscription no. 358. The graffito ends at the lower edge of the rock and is framed between a natural fracture, which marks the upper boundary of the letters, and a deep, irregular natural groove on the left.

Execution: chiselled.

Palaeography

Letters of the archaic alphabet of Thera: Samek: for [dz], with a protruding vertical stroke. Upsilon: single oblique bar attached to the vertical stroke (attested in nos. 351, 352). San: larger than the other letters (10 cm in height, 8 cm in width), with an elongated and prominent stroke

Provenance and Discovery

Place:Archaía Thíra (36.36349, 25.47804)

Date:7th century BCE

Findspot:Within the enclosed area, Inglese 2008.

Coordinates:36.36199, 25.48064

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

Edition


Ζεύς

Apparatus


Edition after Inglese 2008

Commentary

The graffito provides another attestation of the theonym Zeus within this specific sanctuary area, reinforcing the site's cultic significance. The epigraphic field, though naturally constrained, accommodates the text effectively, with the surrounding geological features subtly influencing the layout. The letterforms align with known regional paleographic trends, particularly in the rendering of upsilon and samek. The distinctive execution of san, with its greater height and width, suggests an intentional emphasis, possibly underscoring the theonym's invocation.

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.