ISic030001: Contract for the sale of a house

Composite photo of the inscribed surface, R. Souza, courtesy Museo Regionale Interdisciplinare di Ragusa

ID: ISic030001
Language: Ancient Greek
Text type: Private contract
Object type: lamina
Status: No data
Links: View in current site

Edition

Apparatus criticus

Text of Souza from autopsy, incorporating unpublished fragment 'Cordano 20';
Line.1: Ἐπὶ ἱαραπ[όλου, M.; the final sigma of the line was inscribed above the omicron, apparently to fit the whole name onto the line.
Line.2: μηνὸς Ἀ[πελλ]αίου, M.; omicron erroneously inscribed under the nu in μη⟨ν⟩ὸς; M. indicates an iota inscribed under the second alpha in ἑνδ[εκ]άται but I could not make it out.
Line.3: Κληναγό[ρας ? Ἀρί]στωνο[ς ο]ἰκίαν, M.; Κληναγόρα, ο]ἰκήαν, lamina. The etacized [ο]ἰκήαν was inscribed instead of the expected [ο]ἰκίαν.
Line.4: τ[αλάν]των, M. The scribe was apparently in a rush to record this price – four talents – and broke the transaction narrative in the middle of the seller’s name to write it here in L.4. The second half of the seller’s name appears instead in the next line. Perhaps the scribe did not leave enough space for the whole line, as occurred in L.1, though why the scribe would write out the price before completing the previous line is not clear.
Line.5: Ἄμποχοι, D. These were guarantors for the transaction; on the term ἄμποχος and the role of guarantors see Manganaro (1977, 1341–1344) and more recently Game (2009, 147–150).
Line.6: Ἀγαθάρχοψ, lamina: it is very unlikely that psi was intended, but rather the full hasta of an iota was inscribed in error; ⟨Ξ⟩ένωνος, M., but the letter is clearly not a sigma even if traces indicate a ductus similar to that of a sigma.
Line.8: Ἱπποσένης, lamina.

Physical description

Support

Description: A lead sheet in two pieces, with the left, bottom, and right sides intact but the upper edge damaged.
Object type: lamina
Material: Lead
Condition: damaged condition, fragments, contiguous
Dimensions: height: 7.4 cm, width: 10.4 cm, depth: 0.1 cm

Inscription

Layout: The lines of text begin at the left edge of the sheet and run across to the right edge without margins. Although the original upper edge of the tablet is lost, the beginning of the text is likely preserved; it is unclear what the top margin was. The bottom margin is approximately as tall as is the text itself, i.e. the text ends around the midpoint of the sheet as currently preserved. The first four lines fill the width of the sheet and when the line ends in the middle of a word either the final letters are squeezed in (L.1) or the word is interrupted (L.3).
Text condition: incomplete
Letter heights
Interlinear heights

Provenance

Place of origin: Morgantina
Provenance found: Given by Ricotti Prina in 1983 to the Museo Interdisciplinare Regionale di Ragusa in

Current location

Place: Ragusa, Italy
Repository: Museo Archeologico Ibleo ,
Autopsy: Souza, 2014.03.24 (not on display)
Map

Date

2nd century BCE (200 BC – 100 BC)

Evidence: lettering

Text type

Private contract

commentary

Very likely, the buyer of the house is a woman, Klenagoras, unless one insists that the scribe omitted the final sigma of the masculine name Klenagoras in error (and it would be a very large error to misspell the name of one of the parties to a contract). Each of the witnesses' names is inscribed in a different hand, perhaps evidence that the witnesses themselves signed the document. There are potential prosopgraphical links with other contracts from Camarina and Morgantina.

Bibliography

Digital editions

Printed editions

Discussion

Citation and editorial status

Editor

Jonathan Prag

Principal contributor

Randall Souza

Contributors

Last revision

2/8/2022