II.1.1 13. Ownership(?) inscription, 2nd half V century B.C.E.

Monument

Type

Fragment of bowl, one third segment from rim to base. 

Material

Clay. 

Dimensions (cm)

H., W., Th., Diam..

Additional description

Small bowl, Attica, BG, 2nd half V century B.C.E. (close to Agora XII, no. 861). 

Find place

Berezan. 

Find context

Northwestern sector, Area Б, enclosure 1/VII. 

Find circumstances

Found in 1988, excavations of Ya.V. Domansky. 

Modern location

Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation. 

Institution and inventory

The State Hermitage Museum, Б.88.84. 

Autopsy

August 2016. 

Epigraphic field

Position

Wall, exterior, along the base. Originally inscribed on complete vessel. 

Lettering

Graffito. 

Letterheights (cm)

0.5-0.7

Text

Category

Ownership(?) inscription 

Date

2nd half V century B.C.E. 

Dating criteria

Ceramic date. 

Edition

[---]ρομανδριο[---]

Diplomatic

[---]ΡΟΜΑΝΔΡΙΟ[---]

EpiDoc (XML)

<div type="edition" xml:lang="grc">
   <ab>
      <lb n="1"/><gap reason="lost" extent="unknown" unit="character"/>ρομανδριο<gap reason="lost" extent="unknown" unit="character"/>
   </ab>
   </div>
 
Apparatus criticus

Translation

 

Commentary

We have a partially preserved personal name [--]ρομανδριο[- -], a compound one, where the second stem was -μανδρ-. An exact match for our name does not seem to be attested in LGPN. The closest parallel is a man called Ψηρόμανδρος attested on Samos (LGPN V1-45594, ca. 500 BCE, AM 87 (1972) p. 129 no. XVI). At Borysthenes, there is, however, a theophoric name with the stem μανδρ- : Athenomandros, attested twice (IGDolb 74 and Polinskaya 2020, “Ancient Greek Graffiti from Borysthenes/Berezan. Notes on Recent Finds, 2010-2018.” In Materials of the Berezan (Lower Bug) Archaoeological Expedition, vol. III. (St. Petersburg: The State Hermitage Museum, 2019, pp. 198-203)). By analogy with that, the first stem in our case may have been also a theonym, for example, Ietros, giving us a name Ietromandrios. Compound personal names with mandr- as the second of the two stems are common in Ionia (P. Thonemann).

The grammatical case of the personal name on our cup may have been either Nominative, in which case the inscription could be dedicatory, or Genitive, in which case we would have an ownership inscription. The Nominative case would leave the possibility of an ownership inscription as well.

 

Images

 

(cc)© 2024 Irene Polinskaya