Current Epigraphy
ISSN: 1754-0909

(Paper given at the British Epigraphy Society Spring Meeting, Dublin, April 24th, 2010. Brief report by Charlotte Tupman.)

Formality and informality in Attic epigraphy

Graham Oliver

In the first paper of the day, Graham Oliver applied the theme of the colloquium (formality and informality in epigraphy) to a selection of inscribed materials ranging from the Archaic to the Imperial period. Noting that the method of categorising inscriptions in traditional corpora tends to prevent us from fully examining the potentially complex nature of those inscriptions, Oliver introduced three topics through which we might begin to interpret the subject of formal and informal epigraphy: authority, institutions and location; the formalities of formal and informal epigraphy; and genre.

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(Paper given at the Ancient History Seminar, London, March 11th, 2010. Brief report by Caroline Barron.)

Graffiti or Inscriptions? The Epigraphic Habit in Attica
Claire Taylor

Dr Taylor’s talk focussed on the problems that arise through the categorisation of some inscriptions as Graffiti. She suggested that by making such a stark categorisation, some ‘marks’ have not received the attention that that might deserve, and that, therefore, their full potential as not been realised. These categories also encourage us to view the texts in a certain way. In the modern world, graffiti is often considered part of an illicit subculture, with a common critical response. By referring to these marks and texts as graffiti, we are therefore imposing the judgement that they too are illicit, as well as unconsciously (or consciously?) comparing them less favourably with other epigraphic forms. This is further complicated by the variety of texts and marks that are called graffiti: Individual Letters, Names, Trademarks, Commercial notations, Dedications, Sexual references and pictures. Dr Taylor argued that each mark must be considered in terms of the context in which it appeared eg. A commercial notation on is an important communication for both the buyer and the seller. That it was added to the pot later on, and by a different hand, shouldn’t become more important than the trade information that it relates. Equally, the sexual graffiti found in Pompeii is entirely appropriate for the place in which it was found – a brothel. So, while there is very little that connects the Greek pot’s commercial notation and Pompeii’s sexual graffiti, they are both found in the same category of Graffiti.

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(Paper given at the Ancient History Seminar, London, March 4th, 2010. Brief report by Susan Fogarty.)

Constructing Lives from Stone: Inscriptions and Biographical Traditions
Dr. Polly Low, Manchester

This lively seminar set out to explore whether the development of literary biography in the 4th C can be seen to be reflected in the epigraphic practice of the period. There is a change in style detected in the epigraphic material in the Classical and early Hellenistic periods and, concentrating on mostly Athenian examples, Dr. Low certainly posed some very interesting questions.

In exploring how an epigraphic text may be classed as biographical, Dr. Low looked at honorific decrees which concentrate on the moral qualities of the individual – for example IG i³ 158 (honours for Corinthios) the honorand is simply an ἀνὴρ ἀγαθός, or IG i³ 97 (Eurytion and his father) shows a shift to abstraction in describing them as possessing ἀνδραγαθία. These moral qualities are presented as paradigms of behaviour. The publication formula states the reason for the publication: “so that all other men may know”. This method and intention is seen in literary texts also: Isocrates’ Evagoras describes his individual characteristics (ἐυσεβία, σοφία) in order that he be emulated by the young (Evagoras 73-77). Therefore there is an overlap between the literary and the epigraphic with regard to individual character but this is not the same thing as biography. Dr. Low stated that it is the interaction between the abstract and the individual that is biographical and while Greek epigraphy is a good source for character at this stage, it is less so for action.

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(Paper given at the Ancient History Seminar, London, February 25th, 2010. Brief report by Caroline Barron.)

Athenian Decrees Honouring Priests and Priestesses to 20/19BC.
Stephen Lambert, Cardiff University

In this seminar Stephen Lambert presented a series of Inscriptions from the forthcoming IG II³, which are concerned with Athenian decrees honouring Priests and Priestesses from the early Classical period to 20/19BC.

Dr Lambert highlighted that the decrees honouring the Priests and Priestesses were inscribed on stone, thus indicating the worth of the individual, or individuals, being honoured. They are presented as being worthy of praise in the eyes of the citizens, and in the eyes of Athens, and therefore, in the eyes of the gods.

The presentation was divided into three sections, the outlines of which are detailed below:

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(Paper given at the Ancient History Seminar, London, February 11th, 2010. Brief report by Susan Fogarty.)

On the Meaning of “Common” in Herodotus 8.144: Shared Sanctuaries and the Gods of Others
Irene Polinskaya, King’s College London

“τὸ Ἑλλενικόν consists in being of the same blood and of the same language, in sharing sanctuaries and sacrifices of the gods, and in the sameness of customs”

While most scholars acknowledge τὸ Ἑλλενικόν as an idealised vision of Greekness, Dr. Polinskaya believes the religious element continues to be misread and challenges the standard interpretation of τὸ Ἑλλενικόν as proof of religious unity across the Greek world. She believes that κοινός and ὅμοιος do not convey the same meaning, and ignoring the distinction is ignoring Herodotus’ choice of words. There is a conceptual and mathematical difference between ‘same’ and ‘common’ and the architectural, textual and epigraphic evidence bears this out: there is no sameness, but there are common sanctuaries and sacrifices. (more…)

(Paper given at the Ancient History Seminar, London, February 4th, 2010. Brief report by Naomi Carless Unwin.)

‘A Hellenistic List of Donors (?)’
Riet van Bremen

Dr van Bremen’s paper was concerned with a puzzling inscription from Stratonikeia in Karia (SEG 55, 1145). Unlike the seminars of the previous weeks, which have been dealing with specific themes or ‘types’ of inscription, she took what she referred to as the ‘minimalist’ approach; trying to learn as much as possible from one text. The inscription in question does not obviously belong to any particular category, nor have any direct parallels in the ancient world. On its original publication by M. Ç. Şahin in 2005 (EA 38, pp. 9-12) it was classified as a ‘Hellenistic list of donors’; yet, as he admits, ‘I do not understand the inscription either, because there is no intelligible sentence in it, although there are no vocabulary problems involved, and the inscription is easy to read.’ Van Bremen was hoping to comprehend something about the nature of the decree through close examination of the text, yet also its possible archaeological context; she was hoping to reveal the value of analysing in depth certain unusual texts. (more…)

(Paper given at the Ancient History Seminar, London, January 28th, 2010. Brief report by Charlotte Tupman.)

The letter: a diplomatic history

Robin Osborne

Osborne began his paper by explaining that his main focus would be upon examining structural points in the genre of the letter. A letter is a composition of a very strong generic type: whatever the context of the letter, its writer is bound by conventions that lead to what is written being framed in a particular way, which in turn defines the relationship between the letter-writer and the recipient. Letters must not only be seen in the context of other letters; rather, they must be viewed in the context of other methods of transmitting information. In this way we can examine how convention influenced content.
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(Paper given at the Ancient History Seminar, London, January 21st, 2010. Brief report by Gillian Bentley.)

‘Moving Stones’: The Study of Emotions in Greek Inscriptions

Angelos Chaniotis

In this seminar, Angelos Chaniotis discussed the pertinence of epigraphic evidence in the study of the history of emotions, particularly in view of his current research project: “Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions” in the Greek world (c. 800 BCE-c. 500 CE) at the University of Oxford.

Chaniotis stressed that inscriptions are texts, subject to the same questions of composition and authorship as any other kind of text. They are a form of communication with a specific target audience representing conscious action, selection, and composition. Chaniotis suggested that inscriptions make excellent material for the study of emotional display. Literary texts place emotions within a context, but inscriptions may be more representative due to the sheer amount and heterogeneity of the evidence.

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(Paper given at the Ancient History Seminar, London, January 14th, 2010. Brief report by Gabriel Bodard.)

Destroying Inscriptions: the authorised and unauthorised removal of inscribed documents in the Greek world.
Graham Oliver

In this seminar, Graham Oliver discussed a few particular inscriptions from the Athenian sphere in the Late Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods, using these examples to make some general observations on the removal and erasure of inscriptions.

(1) Re-use

The first examples he discussed were a series of statue bases signed by Antignotos, but their original texts erased when they were re-used and re-inscribed at a later date. As the original inscriptions were not, as far as we know, issued by the demos,  Oliver argues that no special authority was needed to remove them, and in fact they had probably fallen out of use or been taken off display already, since we should assume that inscriptions were not considered to be permanent. Even a handful of fourth century decrees were re-used by pyloroi in the Roman period, which tells us both that even these texts were not permanent and sacrosanct, but that these decrees at least were still intact and in place on the acropolis in the Roman period. The re-use of inscriptions seems to have been fairly normal; even official documents could be removed and re-used without official sanction.
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Paper delivered at the British Epigraphy Society Autumn Colloquium, November 21st, 2009, Oxford. Report by Emma Rix.

‘Inscriptions, Landscape, and the Built Environment in the Eastern Mediterranean and Iran in Late Antiquity’ (Oxford, November 2009)

Matthew Canepa, Oxford, November 21

In this paper, Professor Canepa demonstrated how the rulers of the Sassanian Empire used monumental sculpture and inscriptions to create and emphasise their cultural and racial decent from the Achaemenids, as well as simultaneously interacting with and differentiating themselves from their more recent predecessors, the kings of the Hellenistic Seleucid empire. A crucial feature of this interaction and hence of Canepa’s study was the way in which rock reliefs and other inscriptions interact with and become part of the landscape or building on which they are placed; this interaction can be a key part of their significance.

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Paper delivered at the British Epigraphy Society Autumn Colloquium, November 21st, 2009, Oxford. Report by Charlotte Tupman.

Claiming Space and Memory: the Development of Priestly Inscriptional Practices in Late New Kingdom Egypt (ca. 1190-715 BC)

Elizabeth Frood, Oxford, November 21

Dr. Elizabeth Frood of St. Cross College, Oxford, began with a paper which showed that although “epigraphy” does not exist as a discrete discipline within Egyptology, and there are elements to the study of Egyptian texts which do not pertain to the study of inscriptions in Greek and Latin, there is much that is familiar to the classical epigrapher.

Frood introduced a new project, currently in its development phase, to study the epigraphy of Egyptian temple environments. There were three elements to Frood’s paper: an overview of epigraphy in a temple context; a description of the nature and range of this inscribed material; and a case study of one particular inscription that could affect the way in which we understand Egyptian temple environments.

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Paper presented at the British Epigraphy Society Autumn Meeting. (Brief Report by Philip Davies)

The Earliest Runic Inscriptions: Problems of Language and Interpretation

Elizabeth Solopova, Oxford, November 21st, 2009

In keeping with the theme of the British Epigraphy Society’s Autumn Colloquium, (‘Epigraphy, but not as we know it’) this interesting paper took us away from the familiar territories of the Mediterranean to consider the Runic alphabet (or, to give it its proper name, futhark) used by Scandinavian and Germanic peoples from the second century through to, in the case of Scandinavia, the early modern period. Specifically, her paper examined the difficulties of interpreting ‘older runes’, these being the futhark as extant from approximately the 2nd to the 6th centuries AD. After this the futhark entered a phase of transition, developing and diversifying into regional variations, known collectively as ‘younger runes’.

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Reports given at British Epigraphy Society Autumn Meeting, November 21, 2009. (Brief summary by Gabriel Bodard)

1) Nicholas Milner on recent work at Oinoanda

Nicholas reported on the ongoing epigraphic work at the Oinoanda excavations (where he has been resposible for new inscriptions since 1994), funded by the DAI. New finds since 2007 include:

• several inscriptions on an octagonal tower in the Hellenistic wall including references to Apollo Hypsistos; the tower seems to have been an outdoor shrine to the Sun, and seems to settle the taxing question of which god was referred to by Hypsistos at this site;
• an inscription marking the foundation by C. Iulius Moles of a temple to Caesar, which appears to belong to the reign of Augustus;
• in 2009, a base bearing a verse inscription to Nemesis and a sundial;
• an inscribed lintel block from an early Christian church.

2) Ulrike Roth on Albert Rehm

Ulrike (incoming BES secretary) addressed the meeting with a question rather than a report. Albert Rehm was a German school-teacher and ancient historian (known for his epigraphic work), active in the periods before and after the Second World War, and was outspoken on the subject of the Nazi approaches to ancient history. He described himself as a “Third Humanist”, although this clearly meant something different from Werner Jaeger’s use of the same label. Rehm believed firmly in the importance of working in the field (where Jaeger was reluctant to sully his view of the ancient world by visiting modern Greece), hence his epigraphic research. Ulrike is looking for information, even stories and anecdotes, about Rehm’s fieldwork, in the hope that this might cast light on his vision of “Third Humanism”.

3) Jonathan Prag on financial inscriptions from Taormina

Jon described a collaborative project to republish and analyse 13 financial inscriptions from the Sicel city of Taormina (which was allied to Rome in the Second Punic War), that have been published in scattered publications of variable quality. (8 of the inscriptions are in IG 14; 4 were published by Manganaro from inadequate photographs.) The inscriptions reveal many details of the city’s finances and administration in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC: there are changes over time in the math used, as well as in the administration, the calendar, and the currencies in use. One text in particular offers a thorny problem of dating: it is written in Greek, so should be from before the Roman colony in 27 BC; the reference to the month of  “Quinctilis” should be from before 46; the reference to “duoandres” should be after 44. Manganaro suggests that the text may date from the period when Sextus Pompeius governed the city between 44 and 36, but much remains unclear. The new publication will make new joins between some of the text fragments, and will also thoroughly address issues with the provenance of the inscriptions, some of which are moved and only partially recorded in the excavation reports.

Paper presented at British Epigraphy Society Autumn Meeting. (Brief report by Gabriel Bodard)

Writing in Cypro-Minoan: Beyond Decipherment.

Silvia Ferrara, Oxford,  November 21, 2009

In this paper, Ferrara introduced the audience to problems in the decipherment and interpretation of inscriptions in the Cypro-Minoan script. Since there are only some 217 documents (comprising 4000 signs) in this script, decipherment is difficult if not impossible, and so identification of the language and context of the texts will depend more upon quantitative elements, the objects themselves, their distribution and other archaeological information.

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Paper delivered at the British Epigraphy Society Spring Colloquium, May 2nd, 2009, Oxford.

In the first presentation of the day Benjamin Gray gave a very thorough and densely packed study of the recently published decree from the Eretrian colony of Dikaia, dated between 365-359 BCE in the reign of Perdikkas III (Voutiras/Sismanides 2008 = BE 2008:263, 339).

The decree attempts to effect a reconciliation of the citizen body of this polis after some kind of civil strife, largely by imposing an amnesty on prosecutions for wrongs committed before the archonship of Gorgythos (with the exception of murders, which can be prosecuted on a single day at the end of the month of Daphnephorion). This moratorium, and the heavy penalties imposed on anyone who should attempt to break it, was clearly meant to draw a close to troubles that were threatening to tear the city apart. It is not known whether this was the result of social struggles between Macedonian and Amphipolitan influences, for example, or whether it was a purely local stasis. Perdikkas III of Macedon is appealed to to enforce this decree.

As such amnesties go, allowing even murder trials at all is both unusual and risky, which tells us something about the unique situation in this polis. There was a particularly strong concern for justice and the rule of law (the choice of the city’s name, Δίκαια, may itself have been politically motivated), for contract and procedure above the usual political virtues of stability and concord that are behind amnesties such as those as Alipheira, at Athens in 403, for example.

Gray concluded with some remarks on Greek ideas about the polis, oaths and pledges, and purification. There was vigorous and rich discussion among the audience on the readings of the epigraphic text. (Charles Crowther pointed out that the restoration of γνώμη]ν at the end of line 1 was impossible on grammatical grounds; Angelos Chaniotis added that it was also legally impossible, since Lykios was not a member of the community that passed this decree until after it was passed. Robert Parker also pointed out that the difficult reading δ̣ικασάτω st the start of line 8, must in fact read ὁρκωσάτω. If this was indeed a case of calling in foreign judges to settle a dispute, it is the earliest precedent for what later became a relatively common Hellenistic practice; Chaniotis pointed out that the violation of the sacred law of ἀσυλία in lines 6-7 was a clear sign of desperation, that this amnesty was a last resort attempt at reconciliation.)