Dedication to the Nikai (?)
created: Transcription from editor CDL.
source date: Probably first quarter of the fourth century BC (Rosamilia)
language: ar; en; fr; de; grc; grc-Latn; el; he
availability: 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. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)

[...], pp. 236-238, 434, 439 (ph.), whence [...], 63.1718, [...], 63.1719; [...] 134700; [...], p. 324, number 64 a (text). Cf. [...], pp. 197, 203.

Νίκαις

Pour les Nikai (?).

For the Nikai (?).

Per le Nikai (?).

لأجل نايكي (؟).

This altar, found and published before the series IGCyr133300 to IGCyr133800, 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 [...], 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 (IGCyr133400). 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.