ISic020918: Funerary urn of Pakua Pontia
- ID
- ISic020918
- Language
- Ancient Greek
- Text type
- funerary
- Object type
- lekanis
- Status
- No data
- Links
- View in current site
Edition
Apparatus criticus
- Text after Arena 2021;
- 1: Tagliamonte: Πακία Πομπτία
Physical description
Support
- Description
- The fragmentary lid of a large lekanis, with a truncated cone profile. The lekanis body is lost. The lid is 42 cm in diameter.
- Object type
- lekanis
- Material
- ceramic
- Condition
- No data
- Dimensions
- height: cm, dim: 42 cm, width: cm, depth: cm
Inscription
- Layout
- The text is painted with a dark pigment on the surface of an undecorated and unpainted lid, in two lines over a length of c.15 cm.
- Text condition
- No data
- Lettering
-
- Letter heights
- Line 1-2: 10mm
- Interlinear heights
- Interlineation line 1 to 2: mm
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Messana
- Provenance found
- Excavated in 1971, found in a stone built chamber tomb in Largo Avignone, Messina
- Map
Current location
- Place
- Messina, Italy
- Repository
- Soprintendenza Beni Culturali e Ambientali di Messina , ME 31883
- Autopsy
- in store
- Map
Date
first half of the 2nd century BCE (200 BC – 150 BC)- Evidence
- archaeological-context, nomenclature
Text type
commentary
This lekane is one of at least 7 cinerary containers found in a monumental single-room chamber tomb with stepped dromos entrance, within the hellenistic necropolis on the south side of ancient Messana (area of via Cesara Battisti). The tomb itself, with 3 stone couches, appears to have been constructed for wealthy inhumation burials in the fourth or early third century BCE. It appears that the tomb was re-used in the third century for multiple cremation burials, before subsequently suffering a collapse; a later burial (1st century BCE) in the dromos suggests a terminus ante quem for the period of re-use. Only one of the other cinerary containers preserves a text on it (ISic020917), incised on a different and probably slightly earlier type of vessel; but most of the vessels are so fragmentary that it is difficult to read much significance into this. Both this and ISic020917 record women with Oscan nomenclature, albeit written in Greek. This example preserves the Oscan style of nomenclature (praenomen and gentilicium), but transformed with Greek genitive endings and age at death in the distinctively Sicilian ascending numerals, attested in various inscriptions of the Hellenistic period across the island. Arena suggests that the form Pakua derives form the Oscan Pakviú, and that the transposition to Πακυία and in turn the elision of the υι to υ is influenced by the Doric of the region.
The text was first partially published, at second hand, by Tagliamonte, from an incomplete report from the excavator G. Scibona (line 1 only).
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- TM: -
- EDR: -
- EDH: -
- EDCS: -
- PHI: -
- Printed editions
- ‘Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum’, Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, 1923, http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1607583, at 44.0773
- G. Tagliamonte, I Figli di Marte: Mobilità, Mercenari e Mercenariato Italici in Magna Grecia e Sicilia (Roma, 1994), at 196
- Emiliano Arena, «Due nuove epigrafi funerarie da Messana tardo-ellenistica. Donne mamertine nella tomba a camera di Largo Avignone», Rationes Rerum. Rivista di Filologia e Storia 18 (2021): 115–49, at 125-139 no. 2, figs. 6-7
- Discussion
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Jonathan Prag
- Contributors
- Jonathan Prag
- James Chartrand
- Valeria Vitale
- Michael Metcalfe
- Simona Stoyanova
- system
- Last revision
- 3/6/2022