Ancient Inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea
IOSPE is an international collaborative project operating under the aegis of the International Union of Academies since 2001.
The aims of the project include a new study of all Ancient Greek and Latin inscriptions originating from the Northern Coast of the Black Sea; and publication of Russian and English critical editions of the inscriptions in print and digital formats. The region of the Northern Black Sea was home to numerous ancient Greek settlements from the third quarter of the 7th century BCE until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 CE.
Inscriptiones antiquae Orae Septentrionalis Ponti Euxini graecae et latinae (IOSPE) was the title of the first corpus of ancient inscriptions from the Northern Coast of the Black Sea published in 1885-1901 by Vasilii Latyshev. We retain this title in our project for reasons of conceptual and bibliographic continuity.
Participating institutions include:
- Russian Academy of Sciences (Institute of World History; Institute of Oriental Manuscripts; St Petersburg Institute of History)
- King's College London (Department of Classics; Department of Digital Humanities)
- Institute Ausonius, CNRS, University of Bordeaux 3
- The State Hermitage
Financial support for the project is currently provided by the A. G. Leventis Foundation and the Loeb Library Foundation. In previous years, the project was also sponsored by other organizations.
