Support: White marble base of the type with egg and dart mouldings above and below; the upper moulding is completely chipped, as well as both sides and the base is broken off at bottom (whole base as preserved w: 0.70 × h: 0.37 × d: 0.41); on the upper face, an oval hole with a channel for attachment.

Layout: Inscribed between the mouldings (w: 0.61 × h: 0.165 × d: 0.38).

Letters: 0.035.

Date: Perhaps fourth century BC (lettering).

Findspot: First seen by J. Cassels in 1954 at Cyrene ➚: East Necropolis, at a distance of 100 m. north-west of tomb E1 to which he thought it might have belonged.

Place of origin: Findspot.

Last recorded location: Seen by C. Dobias-Lalou in 1983 at Cyrene ➚: inside archaeological enclosure North of Caesareum. Seen by J. Reynolds before 1995 at the same place.

Text constituted from: Transcription from stone (CDL).

Apparatus

French translation

Arthmiadas fils d'Aristophanès.

English translation

Arthmiadas son of Aristophanes.

Italian translation

Arthmiadas figlio di Aristophanes.

Commentary

The surface of this base is smoothened by some sort of re-use and bears many concretions, showing a long period of exposure outside. Mohamed and Reynolds, when publishing it, did not know where it came from and suspected the South Necropolis, because building works for the modern town of Shahat produced a lot of bases during the last decades. However the Thorns gathered from Cassels' archives a clumsy copy of the inscription mentioned in his publication (Cassels 1955, p. 38), without transcription, as lying '100 m. N.W.' of tomb E1'. This information was also checked by M. Belzic in the Libyan Studies archive at Leicester in 2014.

A different interpretation of the Cassels' copies had lead Dobias-Lalou to guess in 2010 at line 1 a non-attested name whose form would not be impossible. Without connecting this testimony with the stone she had herself studied in 1983, she produced in 2017 a false entry IGCyr114400, which has been deleted for the present edition.

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All citation, reuse or distribution of this work must contain a link back to DOI: https://doi.org/10.60760/unibo/igcyrgvcyr2 and the filename (IGCyr000000 or GVCyr000), as well as the year of consultation.

Images

Fig. 1. Face of igcyr086700 Epitaph

Maps