Inscriptions | American Journal of Archaeology

The Citadel of Gordion and the Dating of the Midas Monument at Midas City

website — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:46:53 +0000

The rock-cut Midas Monument at Midas City, about 150 km west of Gordion, appears to reproduce the kind of megarons that were in operation in Iron Age Phrygia. In a 2023 article in the AJA, Geoffrey Summers argued that the Midas Monument was carved in the early sixth century BCE, when the surrounding area was under Lydian control. In this note, we address his arguments in detail and maintain that the available evidence supports a late eighth-century BCE date for the carving of the Midas Monument, when Midas served as king of Phrygia.

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Entella: A Resilient Ancient Sicilian Community

website — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 16:10:50 +0000

The third-century BCE Sicilian inscribed bronze plaques collectively known as the Entella tablets constitute remarkable evidence of a community’s response to near destruction. The decrees inscribed on these bronze tablets attest to the experience of a small western Sicilian polis during the First Punic War (ca. 264–241 BCE). When the inhabitants of Entella were expelled from their city, they were able to survive both individually and as a community thanks to the intervention of benefactors who sheltered them, fed them, and eventually helped them return home. Although previous work on the inscriptions has discussed significant elements of the episode and noted the fact that the decrees strengthened diplomatic relations with their benefactors, this article sets the tablets in their full historical context, clarifies some remaining questions they raise, and reconstructs their overall program, with particular attention to group dynamics and social and political life. Drawing on theories of community and communal trauma, I show how the Entellinoi commemorated their disastrous dislocation and embraced interaction with communities across Sicily so that they would not suffer so much from an existential threat again.

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Mikon’s Hekatompedon: An Architectural Graffito from Attica

website — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 04:00:00 +0000

Among the more than 2,000 ancient engravings on marble outcrops in hills north and east of Vari, Attica, there appears a remarkable drawing of a building. The structure, which seems to be a temple, is identified by its inscription as “the Hekatompedon” and was produced by an individual named Mikon. This note presents the drawing and the inscription. Following a discussion of the peculiarities of the graffito and its relevance for our understanding of the term ἑκατόμπεδος, it argues that the graffito depicts an Archaic temple on the Acropolis of Athens.

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Daya Cave: A Place of Worship of Mesopotamian and Persian Gods in the West Central Zagros Mountains, Iran

website — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 04:00:00 +0000

In the winter of 2021, a previously unknown and almost inaccessible cave called Aškawt-i Daya was discovered in the heart of Bakhakuh Mountain in the west central Zagros Mountains of Iran. An exceptional feature of the cave is its collection of paintings on the walls and ceiling with animal and human motifs, rendered in black pigment, both singly and in groups involved in scenes of hunting and slaughter. As with other rock paintings in Iran, establishing a date for these paintings is difficult, but there are hints both from the presence of certain motifs and from accompanying inscriptions that the paintings were probably created from the Achaemenid (550–330 BCE) to the Parthian period (247 BCE–224 CE). A depiction of a bull-man, as well as the appearance in the inscriptions of the names of divinities such as Nergal, Marduk, Sin, and Šamaš, suggest that the original gods to be worshiped in the cave were Mesopotamian. The use of the cave as a place of worship continued into the Seleucid (312–63 BCE) and then the Parthian and early Sassanian periods, by which time the cave had been transformed into the setting for a cult of Mithra.

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Qui carbone rudi putrique creta scribit: The Charcoal Graffiti of Herculaneum

website — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 04:00:00 +0000

This article analyzes the types, locations, and visual characteristics of charcoal graffiti from Herculaneum. This type of ancient inscription has been largely ignored in scholarship since the delicate medium has left many of these charcoal graffiti with uncertain readings, and few remain extant. I show that while charcoal graffiti were produced differently than inscribed graffiti at Herculaneum, the types of messages are similar. Yet the size, paleography, and visual impact differ dramatically between the two production methods. Charcoal graffiti were typically much larger than their inscribed counterparts, which, I suggest, resulted in their being written (or being allowed to be written) in different areas of the city. Using archival research on the field notebooks of Matteo Della Corte, the epigrapher who first documented the graffiti from Herculaneum, I examine the paleography, aesthetics, and visual impact of these charcoal graffiti. His line drawings provide, in many cases, our only glimpse into the layout, handwriting, design, and visual impact of the charcoal graffiti. While few, the charcoal graffiti of Herculaneum illustrate a class of inscriptions that was likely ubiquitous in the ancient world and provide important insights into the epigraphic fabric of the city.

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Early Greek Alphabetic Writing: Text, Context, Material Properties, and Socialization

website — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 04:00:00 +0000

Early Greek alphabetic writing has received extensive attention in the literature. Yet such writing is often treated as immaterial, both literally and metaphorically. My study addresses this problem by offering a systematic investigation of the material properties of nearly 300 inscribed objects, mostly ceramic, that date from ca. 750–600 BCE and originate from seven sites across the Greek world. Inspired by work on classical art and text, and on the materiality of writing, I use a quantitative approach to investigate the ways in which early inscriptions interact with the fabric, the shape, and the decoration of the vessels on which they are rendered, reflecting also on the ramifications of this interaction for the socialization of early Greek inscribed objects in diverse contexts. The investigation exposes a range of hitherto neglected patterns attesting to the preferential inscribing and use of particular types of vessels in specific sites or contexts, and to the association of certain types of text with the material properties of the medium that carries it. More broadly, I argue that Greek epigraphy would benefit from methodologies that promote the documentation and interpretation of not only the textual but also the material properties of inscribed objects.

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Reading Visual Cues on the So-called Archive Wall at Aphrodisias: A Cognitive Approach to Monumental Documents

website — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 04:00:00 +0000

The experience of reading a monumental document is fundamentally different from reading a document as a text. Interdisciplinary studies on cognitive perception in neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology, together with recent projects on emotions in the field of classics, emphasize the importance of situating an experience in sensory contexts. This study will apply cognitive scholarship on the process of reading to assessments of how we perceive and read monumental documents. The so-called Archive Wall at Aphrodisias, more accurately described as an epigraphic dossier, perhaps even a monument of self-promotion, provides an ideal case study in terms of preservation and publication of documents in a monumental context. Building on a tradition of scholarship, I examine practical points in the experience of reading an inscribed document as a monument: the role of context, formulae, and visual cues. Assessing these aspects of monumental documents, I consider how monumental documents may have been read and why these documents attracted attention. The methodology approaches the process of reading by examining the physical context and visual cues on this epigraphic dossier and exploring how a general audience of passing viewers may have perceived and read this monument.

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Cultural History and Memory in the Stadium-Gymnasium Complex at Messene

website — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 04:00:00 +0000

This article considers the stadium-gymnasium complex at Messene, built in the third century BCE, as an architectural unity and as a vehicle for the assertion of civic identity among Messenians, both young and old. Through the published archaeological and epigraphical evidence, the discussion examines the complex’s situation in the landscape, the east and west stoas, and the propylon in light of this aspect of the gymnasium’s function. Special attention is paid to the monumental Hellenistic tombs on the west and to the extensive changes made to the west stoa in the Roman period. The results show how the remains of the gymnasium reflect dynamic processes of remembering and forgetting, and illustrate attempts by various elite families in the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods to position themselves at the center of official civic memory through changes to the building’s fabric.

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The Canaanite and Judean Cities of Lachish, Israel: Preliminary Report of the Fourth Expedition, 2013–2017

aja — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 15:07:07 +0000

Ancient Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir) in southern Israel is a key site for understanding the Canaanite cultures of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages and the Kingdom of Judah in the Iron Age of the Levant. It has been intensively excavated since 1932 by a number of entities. This article presents the excavation results by the Fourth Expedition to Lachish in 2013–2017. Fieldwork focused on the site’s northeastern corner, a neglected area believed to have been uninhabited in some periods. Excavation in the area, however, uncovered remains of successive fortifications and evidence of cultic activities. The new discoveries highlight the strong connection of the Bronze and Iron Age cities to the nearby valley, which supplied Lachish with water, mud, fertilized land, and a major road.

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Excavating and Conserving Europe’s Oldest Books: A Papyrus from Mangalia on the Black Sea (P. Callatis 1)

aja — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 18:41:48 +0000

In 1959, the oldest book that had then been found in Europe, a scroll of papyrus datable to ca. 350–325 BCE and here named P. Callatis 1, was discovered in an imposing tomb of Macedonian type at Callatis (Mangalia, Romania) on the west coast of the Black Sea. In 2011, it was recovered in Moscow and returned to Mangalia. The polymer used to conserve it obscures its 224 fragments in visible light, but digital infrared microphotography suggests that it contained a Greek work on Persian history. Since Xenophon attests to an extensive trade in books across the Black Sea, many papyrus rolls probably survive in shipwrecks on its anoxic seabed. We end this article with recommendations for the preservation and recording of papyri that are found in humid environments.

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