ISic020745: ISic020745
- ID
- ISic020745
- Language
- Sikel
- Text type
- ownership
- Object type
- cup
- Status
- No data
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
Apparatus criticus
- Text after Mussinano 1970
Physical description
Support
- Description
- Attic black-glazed cup.
- Object type
- cup
- Material
- ceramic
- Condition
- complete
- Dimensions
- height: 5.5 cm, dim: , width: cm, depth: cm
Inscription
- Layout
- The text is scratched on the outer surface of the base.
- Text condition
- complete
- Letter heights
- Interlinear heights
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Herbessus (?)
- Provenance found
- Found during the excavations (Soprintendenza alle Antichità di Siracusa, 1966—1968) in the East archaic necropolis of Montagna di Marzo, on the bottom niche, East grave 31.
- Map
Current location
- Place
- Agrigento, Italy
- Repository
- Museo Regionale Archeologico Pietro Griffo , 65626, n. sc. 36
- Autopsy
- None
- Map
Date
500—450 BCE (500 BC – 450 BC)- Evidence
- archaeological-context, material-context, lettering
Text type
commentary
The inscription is on one of the 14 inscribed vessels that were part of the grave goods of tomb East 31 of the archaic necropolis of Montagna di Marzo, part itself of a larger set of objects (on which see Albanese Procelli in Agostiniani, Albanese Procelli 2018, pp. 151-182) belonging to two different burials, one more recent than the other, inside a hypogeic chamber with a platform, which was used for the pottery (and not for the deceased, as in the other hypogeic tombs of this type). The burials were contained in two clay sarcophagi. The vessels found in the tomb can be divided into two groups (Agostiniani, in Agostiniani, Albanese Procelli 2018, 194): large Attic (imported) drinking vessels (cups, 'stemless cups', a skyphos, i.e. luxury vessels, typically related to the consumption of wine in the symposium); vessels of different types, all of a smaller size. To the first group belong 7 vases in total, of which 3 belong to the deceased in the front of the chamber, 4 to the second, in the back. The inscriptions of this first group show what appear to be names, perhaps onomastic formulae, followed by an ending in -mi that could be (cf. Agostiniani, in Agostiniani, Albanese Procelli 2018, p. 195) an aphaeretic form of the verb εἰμί, not known in Greek epigraphic culture but perhaps adapted by the writers of Montagna di Marzo in correspondence with syntactic structures proper to their language. The vessel in question is part of the later deposition and has two inscriptions by two different hands, as shown by the difference in the ductus and the different dimensions of the letters. The first engraver writes ρατορα, while the second engraver writes towards the centre of the vase 'αρακακαμι', using the ownership formula. An identical situation, albeit with different ductus occurs in two other cups from the same deposition, both with the names Italos/ara kaka-mi (ISic020742, ISic020743). In this case, the second engraver adds the text on the same line as the previous one (unlike in the other cases, ISic020742-3): the sequence αρακαμι is added to the pre-existing one, ρατορα, in which the second engraver corrects the two arrow-shaped alphas into alphas with horizontal stroke. This correction, has been explained by Agostiniani (2018, 191) as the intention to standardise the text in order to adapt it to the alphabetic habitus of the second writer, who would have been an indigenous of Montagna di Marzo so 'Hellenised' as to have abandoned the arrow-shaped alpha type used by the Sikels as an ethnic marker to switch to the more prestigious and widespread variant with horizontal stroke. However, the hypothesis is still much debated (see Tribulato, Mignosa 2021). The correction could respond to phonetic or trivial uncertainties of ductus due to parallel forms used in Montagna di Marzo, as in the case of the inscription ISic020743 in which two different types of alpha alternate in the same inscription. According to Agostiniani (2018, 196) ῾Ρατορας - and Ἰταλός in ISic020743 - are two sodales of the warrior of the later deposition, who had written their names on the cups they used and then dedicated them to the deceased in the funerary ceremony. The names may also indicate that they are not Greeks, even though the morphology used (the genitive rather than the formula in -mi) is certainly Greek.
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- TM: -
- EDR: -
- EDH: -
- EDCS: -
- PHI: -
- Printed editions
- Luciano Agostiniani, Iscrizioni anelleniche di Sicilia. II. Sicilia Centrale e Meridionale, vol. 2, Forthcoming, at MMA??
- L. Mussinano, «Iscrizioni da Montagna di Marzo», Kokalos 16 (1970): 166–83, at no. 6, p. 174, pl. XXIV, fig. 4; pl. XXVII, fig. 2
- Discussion
- Luciano Agostiniani e R.M. Albanese Procelli, «La tomba Est 31 di Montagna di Marzo (Enna)», Kokalos 52 (2015): 17–49, at figs. 9, 29, 31, 32, 33
- Luciano Agostiniani e M.R. Albanese Procelli, «Montagna di Marzo (Piazza Armerina): la tomba Est 31», Cronache di archeologia e di storia dell’arte 37 (2018): 151–208, at 163, 186, 191, 195, fig. 109 and fig. 35
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Valentina Mignosa
- Contributors
- Jonathan Prag
- Valentina Mignosa
- James Chartrand
- Michael Metcalfe
- system
- Simona Stoyanova
- Last revision
- 10/14/2021