Repository
Cyrene Museum, 250 (fragm. a+b); 513 (fragm. c); 166 (fragm. d).
Support
Dark grey marble block, broken away below, reconstituted from four adjacent fragments (a and b pasted together); the back is cut obliquely, perhaps for its original use (all together 0.49; 0.195;0.09 at top, 0.17 below).
Layout
Inscribed on the face.
Letters
0.035; carefully cut, with very slight serifs; calice-shaped upsilon, slanting sigma.
Place of Origin
Findspot.
Date
First half of third century B.C. (lettering)
Findspot
Fragment c was found during Oliverio's excavations in 1928 at Cyrene pleiades; HGL : Sanctuary of Apollo, in a small building to the North of the Temple of Artemis ; the other fragments are of unknown provenance.
Last recorded Location
Seen by C. Dobias-Lalou in 1979 in Shahat : Cyrene Museum .
Text constituted from
Transcription from stone (CDL).
Fragment d: Oliverio, 1930 Oliverio, G., 1930, Campagna di scavi a Cirene nell’estate del 1928, Africa Italiana3, 141-229 - see in bibliography , p. 205, n. 27, fig. 62, whence SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, Leiden, then Amsterdam, 1923-1971, then 1979- - see in bibliography , 9.323; the other fragments were not previously published.
1
Oliverio, 1930
Oliverio, G., 1930, Campagna di scavi a Cirene nell’estate del 1928, Africa Italiana3, 141-229 - see in bibliography
[---] χος
2
Oliverio, 1930
Oliverio, G., 1930, Campagna di scavi a Cirene nell’estate del 1928, Africa Italiana3, 141-229 - see in bibliography
[---] νευς
Mnasarkhos fils de Kartisthenès [a consacré?] à Apollon.
Mnasarchos son of Kartisthenes [dedicated?] to Apollo.
Mnasarchos figlio di Kartisthenes [ha dedicato?] ad Apollo.
Although both names are not rare in Cyrenaica, this man might be akin to the homonymous thearodokos of the Delphians mentioned in the great list Plassart, 1921 Plassart, A., 1921, Inscriptions de Delphes. La liste des théorodoques, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique (BCH), 45, 1-85 - see in bibliography , IV.16 and registered in PP Peremans, W., van't Dack, E., then Clarysse, W. et al., Prosopographia Ptolemaica, I-X, Studia Hellenistica6, 8, 11-13, 17, 20-21, 25, 38, Leuven, 1950-2002 - see in bibliography 14980. This list is now dated from the third century B.C. (J. Oulhen, unpublished thesis of 1992).
The lettering of this inscription is very similar to that of IGCyr063900 and IGCyr063100, thus placing our inscription at a date not too late in the third century. Therefore, it is tempting to assume that Mnasarkhos was either the thearodokos himself or his grandfather.
Oliverio gave no date for the lettering; the indication 'first century A.D.' given in SEG is not sustainable.
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