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Found in 1915 in the vicinity of
Observed by Fr. Chamoux in 1947 in
Observed by S. Stucchi between 1957 and 1981 at
Never seen by GVCyr team.
.Marked-up according to the EpiDoc Guidelines version 8
ι
Voici ceux qui à Eirènè et En
Lysanias fils d'Iasôn,
Those to Eirene and En
Lysanias son of Iason,
Questi a Eirene e a En
Lysanias figlio di Iason,
This unique relief, found not far from the site of Euesperides, was clearly related to that city. Both style of sculpture and lettering give clues to a date about the middle of the fourth century. When found, it was still painted in vivid colours that fainted quickly. Moved to Tripolitania during World War II, then brought to Cyrene and back to Benghazi, it has been exposed in the Museum of that city. The hazardous circumstances of that Museum do not allow to give clear indications about its present condition.
Only Ghislanzoni suspected verse here, but he tried to link all lines together, producing a very strange sentence. At a), the use of non-dialectal forms at line 1
shows that the text was verse. Furthermore, at the beginning of the text, the only possible restoration is
It is now admitted that the names in c) were all at the nominative, as captions with the name of each figure.
There has been overflowing discussion about the figures. The only clear name, Eurypylos, refers to the episod of the Argonautae at lake Triton (i.e. the
sabkha As-Salmani near Euesperides). Saying that he was a son of Poseidon, he helped them out of the lake and predicted the foundation of Cyrene by a
descendant of Euphemus. But no other character of that myth has been clearly identified. Other explanations suggest unidentified Libyan deities. What
can be said from an epigraphical point of view is that the first name was a feminine; a first letter might have been lost before the first readable alpha.
Stucchi's suggestion (forwarded by Chamoux's unpublished copy) of a feminine name
Metrical analysis of a): a dactylic hexameter was plausibly followed by a lost pentameter, for which there seems to be enough space in the lost part.