Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece by Wilson N. G

Author:Wilson, N. G.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Inscriptions

Inscriptions can be taken to refer to objects made of different materials – e.g. pottery, clay tablets, metal, and most usually stone – on which letters have been carved, drawn, or painted. The study of inscriptions (epigraphy) usually focuses on inscribed stone or metal objects. In this article some mention will he made of inscriptions on pottery, clay tablets, and coins, but the focus will be on stone and metal inscriptions.

Inscriptions provide the cultural historian of the Hellenic tradition with a wealth of ideas and information about the past and the ways in which the people of the past presented themselves. Inscriptions are more familiar to the historians of the Graeco-Roman world, but inscribed material from the Byzantine, Frankish, and Ottoman eras is also known.

Some students of history still make the mistake of thinking that epigraphic evidence has a greater value than other forms of evidence because of its often more durable nature. Inscriptions, like much historical evidence, have been produced in a temporal and spatial context often with a self-conscious appreciation of meaning and function. The evidence of inscriptions is therefore laden with difficulties of interpretation, in addition to the fact that not all the material that was inscribed has survived or been discovered. Further, not all areas of Greece or Greek communities inscribed; nor did all Greek communities inscribe all the time. These phenomena can be summarized by the term “epi-graphic habit”. Of all ancient societies, the Greeks were among the most advanced in terms of their epigraphic habit; and of the Greeks, the Athenians provide the most extreme example of display through inscriptions. Greek inscriptions are one index of the diffusion of Greek culture, and their distribution reaches far beyond the shores of the Mediterranean: Greek inscriptions and organized modern collections of ancient material appear in Bulgaria, Romania, and southern Russia; a large body of evidence exists in the Near East, along the African coast, particularly in Egypt and Cyrene. Greek inscriptions appear all over the Graeco-Roman world, thereby illustrating the importance of the Greek language for the development of Western culture.

But in many communities inscriptions were made not only in the Greek alphabet. From some periods and some regions a combination of languages have survived on some inscriptions. The Letoön trilingual is an inscription which provides a parallel text in Aramaic, Greek, and Lycian (Davies, 1983, pp 244–45). In many areas during the Roman period, bilingual Greek–Latin inscriptions were made, the Res Gestae of Augustus being perhaps the best-known example (Brunt and Moore, 1967). From the Classical and Hellenistic periods, numerous bilingual inscriptions in Greek and Phoenician have survived, especially on Delos, on Cyprus, and at Athens.

Greek inscriptions first appeared in the Archaic period; the earliest known examples are scratched or painted on pottery and date to the second half of the 8th century BC. Their appearance touches on the related question of the introduction of the Greek alphabet. Modern understanding of the introduction and development of the Greek alphabet is heavily dependent on inscriptions. Of

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