Support: A rock-cut altar with two compartments, one hollowed out to the right, the other shallow to the left (for one compartment (?) w: 0.27 × h: 0.10 × d: 0.195); the hollow at right was closed with a stone lid and contained miniature vases.

Layout: Inscribed on the Western side, below the right compartment.

Letters: 0.035-0.038, deeply cut; dissymmetrical nu, slanting, narrow and taller sigma.

Date: Probably first quarter of the fourth century BC (Rosamilia) (lettering, archaeological context).

Findspot: Found between 2008 and 2010 by the Mission of Urbino at Cyrene ➚: Southern Extra-Mural Sacred Zone, North-West of the Extra-Mural Temple of Demeter.

Place of origin: Findspot.

Last recorded location: First studied in 2010 by A. Inglese in situ in the Southern Extra-Mural Sacred Zone. Studied in 2012 by E. Rosamilia in situ.

Text constituted from: Transcription from editor CDL.

French translation

Pour les Nikai (?).

English translation

For the Nikai (?).

Italian translation

Per le Nikai (?).

Arabic translation

لأجل نايكي (؟).

Commentary

This altar, found and published before the series IGCyr133300² to IGCyr133800², is situated just near the first mentioned. The support is the same, but the inscription is different and puzzling.

When publishing it, A. Inglese proposed two interpretations: 1) a masculine personal name, which she thought was also attested at Cyrene; 2) the dative plural of the name of the divine name Nike, i.e. Victory, although no parallel is known. E. Rosamilia, when publishing the rest of the inscribed altars, mentioned again this one and preferred the interpretation with the Nikai.

C. Dobias-Lalou's supplementary comment: 1) The personal name: we have now three such mentions from Taucheira, all from the first century AD (IRCyr2020 T.211, IRCyr2020 T.224, IRCyr2020 T.453) and one from the same region, further eastwards (IRCyr2020 M.81): names ending with -ιος were at the time often reduced to -ις. This one would be thus a variant of Nikaios (more on this point at Dobias-Lalou 2021, p. 264-268). However, this does not match the presumed date of the lettering and of the archaeological context. 2) The Nikai: a dedication at the dative on such altars is quite uncommon. However in the same area we have now the same case for one Eumenide and Melichios (IGCyr133400²). The most puzzling point in this hypothesis is the presence of Victories (and the plural!) in a cultual zone devoted to Zeus and the Eumenides.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Deed Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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. View of igcyr134700 Dedication (?)

Fig. 2. Face of igcyr134700 Dedication (?)

Fig. 3. Tracing of igcyr134700 Dedication (?)

Maps