Epitaph
IGCyr026800
Trismegistos ID: 738276
Source Description
Repository
Cyrene Museum, inv. number unknown.
Support
White marble base with plain mouldings above and below, the upper one badly chipped; left side broken off (0.59; 0.35;0.65).
Layout
Inscribed on the face between the mouldings (0.575; 0.16;0.40), with each line well centered, the letters pressed together in the middle, with large margins on both sides.
Letters
0.05; carefully cut and apicated letters.
Place of Origin
Findspot.
Date
End of second or beginning of first century B.C. (lettering)
Findspot
Found at an unknown date at Cyrene pleiades; HGL : Necropolis , probably North Necropolis (Thorn).
Last recorded Location
Seen by C. Dobias-Lalou in 1979 in Shahat : in front of the ancient Sculpture Museum and again in 1997 in Shahat : Cyrene Museum .
Text constituted from
Transcription from stone (CDL).
Bibliography
Oliverio, 1933-1936 Oliverio, G., 1933-1936, Documenti antichi dell'Africa Italiana, II, fasc. 1-2, Bergamo - see in bibliography , p. 116, n. 112, fig. 68, whence SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, Leiden, then Amsterdam, 1923-1971, then 1979- - see in bibliography , 9.224. Cf. Beschi, 1970 Beschi, L., 1970, Divinità funerarie cirenaiche, Annuario della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni Italiane in Oriente (ASAA)47-48, 133-341 - see in bibliography , p. 200 and fig. 55 (discovery), p. 204 (date of the base); Thorn-Thorn, 2009 Thorn, D.M., Thorn, J.C. (eds.), 2009, A Gazetteer of the Cyrene Necropolis from the original notebooks of John Cassels, Richard Tomlinson and James and Dorothy Thorn, Studia Archaeologica161, Roma - see in bibliography , p. 138 (probable provenance).
Apparatus
French translation
Psaphô fille de Dionysios.
English translation
Psapho daughter of Dionysios.
Italian translation
Psaphò figlia di Dionysios.
Arabic translation
بسافو بنة ديونيسيوس
Commentary
Beschi dates the base of 2nd half of III or beginning of II B.C. However the script is clearly younger (so also Fraser-Matthews, 1987 Fraser, P.M., Matthews, E. (eds.), 1987, Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, I: The Aegean Islands, Cyprus, Cyrenaica, Oxford - see in bibliography , pp. 137, 488, following J.M. Reynolds' opinion).
Beschi shows an archive photograph proving that the base was found in the same undefined tomb as IGCyr025900 together with the mourning half-figure n. 7 of his catalogue, although the latter matches none of the bases.
As the Thorns put it, the only Necropolis where the Italians made some excavations before World War II is the Northern one.
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All citation, reuse or distribution of this work must contain a link back to DOI: http://doi.org/10.6092/UNIBO/IGCYRGVCYR and the filename (IGCyr000000 or GVCyr000), as well as the year of consultation.
