ISic003130: Relief-carved disk engraved by Alkimos
- ID
- ISic003130
- Language
- Ancient Greek
- Status
- edited
- Text type
- dedication
- Object type
- plaque
Edition
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Apparatus criticus
- Text derived from photograph
Physical description
Support
- Description
- Although described as a 'plaque', the object appears to have the form of an oval river worn / rounded stone, and as such belongs with a small group of relief-carved 'ciottoli' (riverine stones), of diverse dates and purposes.
- Object type
- plaque
- Object condition
- complete
- Dimensions
- height: 12 cm, width: 13.7 cm, depth: cm
Material
- Description
- limestone
- Type > subtype
- stone.unspecified > unspecified
Inscription
- Layout
- The front surface has a relief carving of a tetrastyle temple, with a star on the right, and ivy branch below; the text sits on two lines to the left. All elements are carved in relief.
- Text condition
- complete
- Technique
- relief
- Pigment
- No data
- Lettering
Elegant Hellenistic lettering, with serifs, small omicron above the line, sigma and mu with slightly diverging outer strokes, epsilon with shorter middle bar, kappa with short arms
- Letter heights
- Line 1: mm
- Interlinear heights
- Interlineation line 1 to 2: mm
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Agrigentum low certainty
- Provenance found
- "said to have been found near ancient Akragas (Agrigentum) and to come from a private collection near Zurich; by 1971: with Robert E. Hecht, Jr.; purchased by MFA from Robert E. Hecht, Jr., June 7, 1972" (from the MFA website)
- Map
Current location
- Place
- Boston, Sicilia
- Repository
- Boston Museum of Fine Arts
- Accession number: 1972.391
- Autopsy
- None
Date
Late 4th century or early 3rd century BCE (lettering and style) (350 BC - 251 BC)- Evidence
- artistic-style, lettering
Text type
commentary
Vermeule and Comstock suggest that the relief style implies that Alkimos was perhaps a coin die engraver; they also note that the eight-point star first appears in Sicily on Syracusan coinage from c.400 BCE. For the museum's record (Sculpture in Stone (MFA), no. 089; Sculpture in Stone and Bronze (MFA), p. 109) see https://collections.mfa.org/objects/151092
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- Printed editions
- ‘Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum’, Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, 1923, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1607583, at 28.0761
- M.B. Comstock and C.C. Vermeule, Sculpture in Stone: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1976), at 57 no.89 ph
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Jonathan Prag
- Contributors
- Last revision
- 4/1/2026