Name
IGCyr064920
Trismegistos ID: 738342
Source Description
Support
Veneer panel of light grey marble with white veins, re-cut and re-used for the right side of a large pedestal bearing on its front side IRCyr C.92 and formerly inscribed with IGCyr064910 (0.23; 0.89;0.073).
Layout
Inscribed in two lines above IGCyr064910; line 2 slightly displaced to the right.
Letters
0.015; serifs, zeta with vertical axial stroke, low bar of eta, non-slanting sigma, open omega.
Place of Origin
Date
End of second or beginning of first century B.C. (lettering, context)
Findspot
Found by E. Ghislanzoni in 1915 at Cyrene pleiades; HGL : Temple of Zeus on the agora .
Last recorded Location
Last seen by C. Dobias-Lalou in 2010.
Text constituted from
Transcription from stone (CDL).
Bibliography
Chamoux, 1946 Chamoux, F., 1946, Un sculpteur de Cyrène, Zénion fils de Zénion, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique (BCH)70, 67-77 - see in bibliography , whence SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, Leiden, then Amsterdam, 1923-1971, then 1979- - see in bibliography , 20.726 with additional note by J. Reynolds; Rosamilia, 2014 Rosamilia, E., 2014, Firme di scultori della Cirenaica: un'analisi del corpus, in Luni, M. (ed.), Cirene greca e romana, Monografie di archeologia libica36, Cirene Atene d'Africa7, Roma, 89-106 - see in bibliography , n. 15. Cf. Ghislanzoni, 1916 Ghislanzoni, E., 1916, Statua di Giove ed iscrizione onoraria agli Imperatori Adriano ed Antonino Pio rinvenuti in Cirene, Notiziario Archeologico del Ministero delle Colonie2, 193-216, - see in bibliography , pp. 199-201, fig. 2; Mariani, 1922 Mariani, L., 1922, Zeus aigiocos, Notiziario Archeologico del Ministero delle Colonie3, 7-20 - see in bibliography , p. 9; Chamoux, 1947 Chamoux, F., 1947, Note complémentaire sur le sculpteur Zénion, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique (BCH)71, 371-372 - see in bibliography ; Ensoli, 2003 Ensoli, S., 2003, La terrazza superiore dell'Agorà di Cirene. Il tempio di Zeus e l'arco occidentale della Skyrotà, in Studi in memoria di Lidiano Bacchielli, Quaderni di Archeologia della Libya (QAL)18, 47-91 - see in bibliography , pp. 74-91, fig. 35, whence SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, Leiden, then Amsterdam, 1923-1971, then 1979- - see in bibliography , 53.2039; Ensoli, 2007 Ensoli, S., 2007, La statua di Zeus Egioco a Cirene, in L. Gasperini, S.M. Marengo (eds.), Cirene e la Cirenaica nell'antichità: atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Roma-Frascati, 18-21 dicembre 1996, Ichnia9, Tivoli, 201-250 - see in bibliography , pp. 229-231.
Apparatus
French translation
Zéniôn fils de Zèniôn.
English translation
Zenion son of Zenion.
Italian translation
Zenion figlio di Zenion.
Arabic translation
زينون بن زينون
Commentary
There has been a general agreement about the function of this personal name, which would be the name of the sculptor of one or more statues standing on a basis; lacking an ethnicon, it might imply that the artist was a Cyrenaean and did not use the verb ἐποίησεν for signing. However, the main problem has been the relation of this inscription with the dedication to Hadrianus and Antoninus now standing on front of the same pedestal (IRCyr C.92), from which some scholars tended to dissociate it. Ensoli, 2003 Ensoli, S., 2003, La terrazza superiore dell'Agorà di Cirene. Il tempio di Zeus e l'arco occidentale della Skyrotà, in Studi in memoria di Lidiano Bacchielli, Quaderni di Archeologia della Libya (QAL)18, 47-91 - see in bibliography decisively ascribed the dedication for the emperors to an arch closing the street nearby to the West; if so, the present panel, although of the same marble, should have been re-used from another former monument.
Reynolds assigned the lettering to the first century A.D.; we think that this might be earlier. On the other hand, Paci in Stucchi-Bacchielli, 1983 Stucchi, S., Bacchielli, L., 1983, L’Agorà di Cirene, II.4: Il lato Sud della platea inferiore e il lato Nord della terrazza superiore, Monografie di Archeologia libica17, Roma - see in bibliography , pp. 48-52 has shown that the white marble basis of the pedestal belonged to a honorific monument of late Hellenistic date placed on the opposite side of the street between 150 and 100 B.C. As for the grey marble panels of the pedestal, they seem to have been added when the statue of Zeus Aigiochos was erected upon the basis in the temple at a date estimated by Ensoli, 2007 Ensoli, S., 2007, La statua di Zeus Egioco a Cirene, in L. Gasperini, S.M. Marengo (eds.), Cirene e la Cirenaica nell'antichità: atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Roma-Frascati, 18-21 dicembre 1996, Ichnia9, Tivoli, 201-250 - see in bibliography between the late Hellenistic and the Julio-Claudian era, with a preference for the higher chronology that would also be suitable for our inscription.
Reynolds' note about the presence of inscription IGCyr064910 on the same panel, which was only printed in a footnote to SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, Leiden, then Amsterdam, 1923-1971, then 1979- - see in bibliography , 20.726, remained unknown to those interested into the question of the statue(s) associated with this name. Rosamilia, who was able to control Reynolds' reading on a cast kept in Rome, definetly rejected the classification as an artist's signature.
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