ISic030024: Inscribed bronze basin
No image available
Edition
Apparatus criticus
- Text after Dubois (IGDS)
Physical description
Support
- Description
- An inscribed bronze basin.
- Object type
- lebes
- Object condition
- complete
- Dimensions
- height: cm, width: cm, depth: cm
Material
- Description
- bronze
- Type > subtype
- metal.bronze > unverified
Inscription
- Layout
- No data
- Text condition
- No data
- Technique
- engraved
- Pigment
- No data
- Lettering
- No data
- Letter heights
- Line 1: mm
- Interlinear heights
Provenance
- Place of origin
- Sabucina medium certainty
- Provenance found
- Found in a burial in the southern necropolis of Sabucina.
- Map
Current location
- Place
- Gela, Sicilia
- Repository
- Museo Archeologico Regionale di Gela
- Autopsy
- No autopsy
- Map
Date
475—451 BCE (475 BCE - 451 BCE)- Evidence
- lettering
Text type
commentary
The anthroponym is of non-Greek origin. But the ownership formula replicate the typology of those attested on Greek pottery even in the Archaic period. Note that the inversion of the letters in the second part of the name may result from inexperience (perhaps the copying of the name written by others) or - more likely I think - from the imitation of similar usages seen in Greek epigraphy. In particular, more than a few Greek defixiones that were widespread in Sicily in the years shortly before reported exactly the same practice, i.e. writing names backwards, rotated or inverted, certainly for reasons related to the use of the defixiones that perhaps were not entirely clear to the Sikel/Sikan writers? It is worth mentioning that the inscription is on a bronze lebes found in a tomb in the necropolis of Sabucina.
Bibliography
- Digital editions
- Printed editions
- P. Orlandini, «L’espansione di Gela nella Sicilia centro-meridionale», Kokalos 8 (1962): 69–121, at 102, pl. XXV.1-2
- A. Dell’Aira, «Silloge epigrafica geloa» (Università degli Studi di Palermo, 1965), at 152-155, no. 78, pl. 19
- M. Migliore, Sabucina (Palermo, 1981), at 117, fig. 90
- IGDS1 Dubois (1989) at 172
- Arena (1990) at 37, 45
- SEG at (1998), 48.1253,comm
- Renato Arena, Iscrizioni greche archaiche di Sicilia e Magna Grecia. Iscrizioni di Sicilia. II. Iscrizioni di Gela e di Agrigento, 2nd ed., vol. 2, 5 voll. (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2002), at 105, pl. XXX.1
Citation and editorial status
- Editor
- Jonathan Prag
- Principal contributor
- Valentina Mignosa
- Contributors
- Last revision
- 8/14/2026