Support: Fragment of a white marble panel, thicker above than below, broken off at right and left, with a dowel-hole in the bottom, perhaps due to a repair, which would mean that the panel was also broken off below, or related with an adjacent panel completing the monument; a garland was sculpted on the face (w: 0.10 × h: 0.195 × d: 0.03-0.035).

Layout: Inscribed on the face, a) left of the garland in two lines; b) inside the garland.

Letters: a) 0.02; b) 0.01 with serifs; non-slanting sigma.

Date: Perhaps second half of third or first half of second century BC (lettering).

Findspot: Found before 1977 at Cyrene ➚: exact findspot unrecorded.

Place of origin: Findspot.

Last recorded location: Cyrene Museum, 302. Seen by C. Dobias-Lalou in 1977 in Shahat: Cyrene Museum.

Text constituted from: Transcription from stone CDL.

French translation

a) [Untel fils d'Untel?].

b) (scil. Jeux) Isthmiques.

English translation

a) [So-and-so son of So-and-so?].

b) Isthmian (scil. games).

Italian translation

a) [Il tale figlio del tale?].

b) (scil. Giochi) istmici.

Arabic translation

أ) [فلان ابن فلان ؟]. ب) الإسثيمية ("الألعاب": كما يمكن فهمها ضمنياً).

Commentary

Such monuments, well known in Greece, are uncommon in Cyrenaica. We only know of many garlands cut into the walls of buildings, mainly gymnasiums, with a name written inside and those seem to be rather graffiti emanating from friends or from the winner himself and concerning local competitions. Here we have a more monumental honorific marker, which should give the name of the honoured person and inside garland(s) the mention of the games where he (she) carried off prize(s). The inscription a) should either have been cut across the garland or only at left (possibly with a companion piece at right). If the latter, it is not impossible to have a woman's name ending with -α and her father's name at the genitive ending with -ς, if and only if she was, as owner of the carriage, a winner of horse-races. Conversely if the layout was the former, the α was in the middle of the own name and the σ in the middle of the father's name. It seems impossible to guess more.

Amongst the different types of monuments with garlands commemorating victories in the main competitions, this one should be interpreted as a funerary stele if the name is really at the nominative. However if the name was at the accusative the monument would be honorific (see Guarducci 1974, pp. 99-102, 138-140).

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