#epigraphy

[officialpenisenvy]

CIL VI, 35887 = CLE 1532 = EDR120786:

Cara mieis vixi, virgo vitam reddidi. / Mortua heic ego sum et sum cinis, is cinis terrast. / Sein est terra dea, ego sum dea, mortua non sum. / Rogo te, hospes, noli ossa mea violare. / Mus vixit annos XIII.

Dear to mine I lived, life I left as a maiden. / Here I am dead and I am dust, and dust is earth. / And if Earth is a goddess, I am a goddess, I am not dead. / I ask you, stranger, do not wish to desecrate my bones. / Mus lived thirteen years.

a touching mixed-metre epitaph for a young girl: nearly identical verses appear in the epitaph of young Utilis (CIL VI, 29609 = CLE 974 = EDR144568), and both share a common theme with an epigram attributed to Pseudo-Epicharmus (D.L. Page, p. 154).

εἰμὶ νεκρός, νεκρὸς δὲ κόπρος, γῆ δ' ἡ κόπρος ἐστίν· / εἰ δ' ἡ γῆ θεός ἔστ', οὐ νεκρὸς ἀλλὰ θεός.

I am a corpse, a corpse is dung, and earth is dung too; / and if Earth is a god, I am not a corpse but a god.

[hercorrupterofwords]

flavia iulia helena ❦ CIL VI 01134

[along-the-silkroad]

Baked clay plaque with Proto-Sogdian inscription, 1st–3rd century CE. Central State Museum of Kazakhstan, Almaty The Sogdian alphabet was devised to record the Sogdian language, an Iranian tongue spoken by the inhabitants of Sogdia. It ultimately developed from the Syriac script, itself a later form of the Aramaic alphabet. Alongside the Manichaean and Syriac scripts, it was one of three writing systems employed for Sogdian. From roughly 100 to 1200 CE, it was in use across much of Central Asia, stretching from the Iranian frontier in the west to China in the east.

[thoodleoo]

Got any thoughts on this?? Ive got pretty good Latin background but feel stuck

Im doing a conference presentation about the place this is in and the artifacts etc etc but I need help

you should really ask an epigraphist rather than a random blogger for help with a conference paper...i'll take a look because i like mosaic epigraphy but i am not a valid source for academic work.

i can tell you two things about this. the first is that it looks byzantine-era to me. the second is that the inscription is some sort of dedicatory inscription- it reads VITALIS ET CARDELA VOTUM SN, or "vitalis and cardela have fulfilled their vow." the SN is a bit tricky, but i'm taking it as an abbreviation of solverunt following the typical "votum solvit" formula

i highly recommend taking a look at tom elliot's compilation of abbreviations in latin inscriptions. it is somewhat old, but a useful tool nonetheless.

[en-theos]

epigraphic records of ancient greek priestesses my beloveds. lysistrate priestess of demeter and kore at eleusis my beloved. chairestrate priestess of kybele who was buried near piraeus my beloved. myrrhine priestess of athena nike shining example among women and lysimache priestess of athena polias my beloveds. timarete of corinth who may have served either gaia or enodia in pella my beloved!!!!!

[jeannereames]

Finally got round to the first in a transfer of material from TikTok to YouTube. I didn't eliminate them from TikTok, but I'm going to start on a series about Hephaistion (and Krateros) at Alexander's court. This is the first. It's longer than average by about 10 minutes. I do genuinely try to keep these under 30 minutes. But the storytelling nature of this one got away from me. I still think it works, so I'm keeping it.

If you are a student, especially one possibly thinking about a grad career, I discuss here how a random question while outlining my dissertation led down a very deep rabbit hole that resulted in a rather surprising (and now generally accepted) correction to who Hephaistion was and where he came from. Even overly long as it is, there are important things left out here (including Waldemar Heckel's article, "Hephaistion: the Athenian?").

But it tells the story of how I came to realize Hephaistion (and his family) were not ethnic Macedonians, but likely Athenian, or at least of Attic-Ionic extraction.

So if you've read this before and not heard me tell the story, and where my research finally led me (with the final 2020 publication, "Becoming Macedonian"), here you go.

And if you're a student, struggling to find a research paper, here's an example of how something can come up and bite you on the ass when you least expect it.

[collectedinspirations]

The practice of combining individual letters into ligature forms—known in Armenian as Ktsa’gir (Կցագիր)—originated primarily from the necessity to conserve space, particularly within the contexts of epigraphy and the design of seals. Although rarely employed in manuscripts executed in the Erkata‘gir script, such ligatures occasionally appear when spatial constraints arise at the end of a line. In these instances, multiple characters are visually conjoined to accommodate the limited surface.

Ktsa'gir Կցագիր Armenian Calligraphy by Ruben Malayan 2025

[linguisticdiscovery]

A lost Canaanite language called Amorite has been decoded thanks to the discovery of bilingual tablets, similar to the way the Rosetta Stone helped scholars decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The tablets were written in Amorite and Akkadian using the cuneiform script. Prior to the discovery of these tablets there was such little written evidence for Amorite that some scholars doubted whether it even existed. Amorite was a Canaanite language related to Hebrew, in the Semitic language family.

Cryptic lost Canaanite language decoded on 'Rosetta Stone'-like tablets

Two ancient clay tablets from Iraq contain details of a "lost" Canaanite language.

Pretty cool, Amorite? 😅