Just circulated via AEIGL:
Mireille CORBIER fait savoir que L’Année épigraphique 2005 est sortie au Mois d’août 2008 et peut être commandée à la maison d’édition
Presses Universitaires de France
6 avenue Reille
75685 Paris Cedex
revues@puf.comUne remise de 20% est accordée aux membres de l’AIEGL sur présentation d’un justificatif.
(Publisher’s website at https://www.puf.com/wiki/Revues:L’année_épigraphique_vol_2005 –but no mention of the discount and apparently no online purchase option.)
Charles Watkinson sends word of a new publication from the American School of Classical Studies in Athens:
Theoroi and Initiates in Samothrace: The Epigraphical Evidence, by Nora M. Dimitrova. 208 pp., 132 b/w figs (Hesperia Suppl. 37, ASCSA 2008) ISBN 978-0-87661-537-9 Pb $55.00
The core of this work is an edition of all documents pertaining to sacred ambassadors (theoroi) and initiates (mystai and epoptai) in Samothrace. These documents, which constitute the majority of all Samothracian inscriptions, form a crucial body of evidence for the Samothracian Mysteries of the Great Gods, the most famous mystery cult in antiquity after the Eleusinian Mysteries. All 169 inscriptions that concern theoroi and initiates, both published and unpublished texts, are presented here. The presentation of each document includes the following elements, in accordance with standard epigraphical publications: a physical description of the stone, bibliography, text, epigraphical commentary, and general commentary. Part I comprises documents concerning theoroi in Samothrace, and Part II, those concerning initiates. Each part is prefaced by a discussion of various problems associated these classes of visitor. A major contribution of the volume is prosopographical: The author increases the total number of known theoroi to approximately 250, and that of initiates to some 700. Fourteen new names of eponymous kings, the major Samothracian magistrates, have also been added to the list. A map of the cities who sent visitors to Samothrace demonstrates the site’s wide catchment area.
More information about the book, and a link to buy it, can be found at: https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/publications/book/?i=9780876615379
The volume is available to purchase through Amazon.com, bn.com, and other fine booksellers.
Update: Charles has provided the cover page, table of contents and introduction as a PDF file.
Over on the Markup list (for discussion of text markup issues) we have been discussing the ligature of VI that appears in some Latin inscriptions. I asked:
We have come across several cases in the Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania of the symbol that looks a little like an Arabic '4', but seems in fact to be a ligature of VI and stands for the numeral six (or, followed for example by II, part of a larger numeral VIII etc.) (1) is this a recognised symbol, and is there a Unicode codepoint that is either dedicated to it or acceptable to use to encode this symbol (as opposed to just for display)? (2) is there a common name for this symbol, better than "six-ligature" or "vi-ligature"?
(The symbol appears not to have a separate codepoint in Unicode, and nor should we expect it to be treated differently from U+2165, “Roman numeral six”, of which it is, after all, only a glyph variant. We have also, I think, answered the question of how to represent this symbol in EpiDoc [i.e. just like any other ligature].)
As an interesting aside, Paul Iversen suggested that there may some influence on this glyph-form from the Greek numeric stigma/digamma for six. There are plenty of other examples of the use of this symbol (including some useful Latin papyrological examples provided offlist by Rodney Ast). I include here the one photograph I have been able to find of a Tripolitanian example, where (VI)III = 9:
What do readers think? Is there any relationship between this and digamma? Is there a name for this ligature? Is there any argument for treating this any differently from a ligature of (NM) or (ΠΡ)?
From BMCR 2008.10.1 (but not actually available for review):
Cooper, Craig (ed.). Epigraphy and the Greek historian. Phoenix supplementary volume, 47. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2008. xvii, 197 p. $75.00. ISBN 9780802090690.
Still available from September 2008 (and of possible interest to epigraphers):
*Dubois, Laurent. Inscriptions grecques dialectales de Sicile. Tome II. Hautes Études du monde gréco-romain 40. Genève: Droz, 2008. 220 p. $82.00 (pb). ISBN 9782600013406.
*Bodel, John and Saul M. Olyan (edd.). Household and family religion in antiquity. The ancient world: comparative histories. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell Pub., 2008. xii, 324 p. $100.00. ISBN 9781405175791.
This announcement has been doing the rounds this week (seen so far on Humanist, Classicists):
Telamon. Online Library of the Ancient Greek Inscriptions from Bulgaria
The aim of the Telamon project, which is hosted by St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia University, Department of Classics, is to create a digital library of the ancient Greek inscriptions found in Bulgaria. Their total number counts more than 3500 written in a period of about 1000 years (6th century BC — 4th century AD). Georgi Mihailov publishes those that have been discovered up to the mid 80’s in Inscriptiones Graecae in Bulgaria repertae.
The focus is currently on the digitilising the inscriptions of the most eminent poleis of the Roman Thrace, Philippopolis and Augusta Traiana. They are approximately 1600, 1200 of which are already included in IGBulg. A third of them, however, need some revision or correction, while other 400 are unpublished or published in dispersed and often inaccessible publications in Bulgarian. Therefore, we hope that the creating of an electronic database of these inscriptions will facilitate the study of the history, culture, and language both of the Bulgarian lands in antiquity and of the Greco-Roman civilization as a whole.
The main standard of applying the XML language in encoding the epigraphic monuments, known as EpiDoc and developed by an international team of specialists, will be put into operation.
This is the first of two posts arising from recent and ongoing work (some of which I’ve been involved in) on the Antikythera Mechanism. Two installments of this project have been published in Nature, in 2006 and 2008. For a partial bibliography see:
https://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/bibliography?sort=type&order=asc
A classic (but now very outdated) study is Derek de Solla Price, Gears From the Greeks, 1974.
The Mechanism was a bronze gearwork device for displaying astronomical and chronological cycles and phenomena. It was recovered from the “Antikythera Wreck” c. 1900, and now consists of some 80 or so fragments in the Archeological Museum in Athens. From several considerations, including most usefully some datable coins from Pergamum and Ephesus recovered from the wreck in 1976, the wreck can be dated to after (but probably not very long after) 70 B.C., and its cargo was luxury items (bronze and marble statuary, glassware, and of course our Mechanism itself).
It is generally assumed, with good reason, that the vessel got its cargo from one or more places in Asia Minor and the Aegean, and was heading west, maybe to Italy. The Mechanism, however, turns out, as we recently discovered, to have had an inscribed dial displaying the current date according to the Corinthian calendar, which means that it was made for–if not in fact made in–one of the several regions (Corinth, NW Greece, parts of Sicily, all on the “wrong” side of Antikythera) where this calendar was used. This is obviously puzzling. (I’ll return to the subject of the Corinthian calendar in my second post.)
We’d also really like to know the approximate date of the Mechanism: obviously it predates the wreck, thus can hardly be later than mid-first-century B.C., but was it new then or, like the statues in the cargo, already old? There seems little prospect of getting help with this question from analysis of the (in any case extremely corroded) metal. The astronomical knowledge built into the Mechanism would fit the first century, but we don’t know enough about earlier Hellenistic astronomy to be able to rule out the 2nd century or even the 3rd, though such an early date would go against a lot of current assumptions about what 3rd century B.C. Greek astronomy looked like. The only independent evidence we seem to have for the date is the paleography of the abundant inscriptions which were engraved on practically all the available exterior surfaces plus some supplementary plates.
Several academic seminar programmes are being advertised at the moment. Here is a selection from recent posts that may be of interest to epigraphers:
(1)
University of Manchester: Classics & Ancient History
CA Wed. 22 October, 5.30 pm, Samuel Alexander Building, Room A. 7
Paul Holder (John Rylands University Library Manchester)
The newly discovered (and unusual) inscribed altar from Manchester
(2)
Faculty of Classics, Cambridge, room G.21, 5.15pm
17th November: Peter Liddel, Manchester
“Responding to resistance in ancient Greece”
(3)
Institute of Classical Studies, 5pm, Senate House North Block NG 14
Greek Literature Seminar 2008
24 November: Ivana Petrovic (Durham), “Hellenistic epigrams and literary criticism”
Announcements of any other seminars welcome!
Noted on the website of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens:
La fin de l’épigraphie latine dans l’Orient grec: paléographie et chronologie
September 29, 2008 18:00
École française d’Athènes, Salle de Conférences, Didotou 6, 106 80 AthènesSEMINAR
Speaker: Denis Feissel
210-36-79-904Séminaire de l’École française d’Athènes
Lundi 29 Septembrem 18 h
Invité: Denis Feissel, Professeur au Collège de France
La fin de l’épigraphie latine dans l’Orient grec: paléographie et chronologie
Salle de conférences de l’EfA
Renseignements : 210-36-79-904
Among Richard Sadler’s latest additions to the Finds page on the Berlin-Kent Ostia Excavations Blog (18 September 2008), we find a fragment of a slate tablet, preserving 6 or more lines of incised Greek, to judge from the photo (I cannot make out enough of the text to offer a transcription here). Sadler tentatively interprets this object, found in fill, as evidence that the forum housed a school in Roman times.
This is the second item of epigraphic interest presented online by the team (see our discussion of the first fragment). Luke Lavan’s post yesterday on the main blog gives us hope that we’ll soon see more:
The cleaning of the facade has revealed a number of new layers, including a destruction layer which apparently overlies the earliest Trajanic phase of the floor and may give a TPQ date for the building of the facade in its final form. A well-cut inscription came out this layer and is being identified. Elsewhere on site inscriptions are becoming more comon as parts of the paving are being removed. Such thin inscribed pieces were popularly reused as veneers and paving slabs, and many more likely to have been used, with their inscribed faces down , as Late Roman architects sought to create a paving surface reusing the epigraphic monuments of a previous and perhaps forgotten generation. The re-used material or ’spolia’ is likely to become a key focus of the project. Today Richard Sadler and Diana Everett began to survey the spolia around the forum with some interesting results. We hope to use infomation from the nature of the reuse of stonework to try to phase and date different walls, which often contain similar pieces, suggesting that they were laid down at a similar moment in time.
Wieland Willker, on his Textual Criticism bulletin board, has posted (and continues to update) pictures, comments and queries on an inscribed cup (rude pop-up advert there), allegedly excavated by Franck Goddio’s team from the harbor at Alexandria earlier this summer and now in Madrid for an exhibition. The post reacts to (and links to) a piece in Der Spiegel (2008-09-18) by Matthias Schulz, unfortunately titled “Heiliger Gral vom Nil,” wherein Klaus Hallof, André Bernand, Manfred Clauss and David Fabre are quoted in the context of the following question about the inscribed text appearing prominently on the cup (ΔΙΑΧΡΗΣΤΟΥΟΓΟΙΣΤΑΙΣ):
“DIA CHRESTOU OGOISTAIS”. Was bedeutet das?
Readers are invited to provide additional information or opinions in comments here.
On his blog Historical Archaeology in the Ancient Mediterranean, Brandon Olson has started writing about a paper he’s recently started working on in which he aims to:
compare the glandes Perusinae with Greek examples to examine how each tradition used language to promote violence
Paid-up members of the British Epigraphy Society will have last week received a copy of issue #19 of the BES Newsletter, either by email or in print. (I note that the online archive at https://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/BES/Newsletter.htm does not have this issue online yet–although issue 18 [Winter 2007] is listed as “Autumn 2008”.) I shall not reproduce the whole newsletter here without permission, but the news reported within it includes:
To offer contributions or suggestions for the next newletter, please write to Peter Haarer, 19 Purcell Road, Marston, Oxford, OX3 0EZ, e-mail: peter.haarer@classics.ox.ac.uk.
