Dedication and artist's signature

IGCyr125700

Trismegistos ID: 738806

Source Description

Repository

Cyrene Museum, 152.

Support

Part of a white marble panel, broken off at left and right and above (0.28; 0.215;0.07).

Layout

Inscribed on the face.

Letters

Line 1-2: 0.04; line 3: 0.015; carefully cut, with small serifs; smaller circular letters, not really slanting sigma, upsilon with tall vertical stroke and open upper part.

Place of Origin

Findspot.

Date

Perhaps second half of third or rather beginning of second century B.C. (lettering)

Findspot

Found probably before World War II at Cyrene : place unrecorded, but plausibly from the Sanctuary of Apollo .

Last recorded Location

Seen by C. Dobias-Lalou in 1979 in Shahat : Cyrene Museum .

Text constituted from

Transcription from stone (CDL).

Bibliography

Dobias-Lalou-Rosamilia, 2016 (ph.)

Text

- - - - - -? [---]  Α̣Δ̣ [---]  [Ἀπόλλω]νι δε̣[κάταν? ---]  [---] ονίσκου ἐ[ποίησεν?].

Apparatus

French translation

 [---]  (a consacré) à Apollon au titre de la d[îme?].

[Oeuvre d'Untel] fils de  [---] oniskos.

English translation

 [---]  (dedicated) to Apollo as a t[ithe?].

[Work of So-and-so] son of  [---] oniskos.

Italian translation

 [---]  (ha dedicato) ad Apollo come d[ecima?].

[Opera del tale] figlio di  [---] oniskos.

Commentary

Although very fragmentary, this inscription consists clearly of a dedication with an artist's signature in smaller characters below.

At line 2, the restoration was chosen on behalf of its high frequency in Cyrenaean inscriptions. It is associated with an artist's signature in IGCyr019000. At first view it is not quite impossible that the text read [ἐκ τῶ]ν ἰδ[ίων] 'at his own expense', which would be used for honoring a person with a statue. However such formulas occur only later and exclusively for building or reparing works.

At line 3, we restore the most common formula. There also exists at Cyrene at least one instance with ἔ[ργον] (see IGCyr108400 with the commentary). In the latter case, the ending of genitive would belong to the sculptor's name. In the preferred reading, the father's name of the sculptor ended with -ονίσκος. No such name is hitherto attested in Cyrene. As no ethnic is mentioned, thie sculptor was plausibly a Cyrenaean.

Creative Commons Attributions-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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.

Images