• m14-439-10
    Inscribed Base of Cup (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)

Inscribed Base of Cup: Dedication to Hera

Date
Found in a Hellenistic fill contemporary with or slightly predating the Temple of Artemis; the cup is probably Persian or early Hellenistic., Late Lydian or Hellenistic
Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
P10.068
Material
Ceramic
Object Type
Pottery, Graffito
Pottery Shape
Cup
Pottery Ware
Atticizing Black Glaze
Pottery Attribution
Inscription Text
	Ἥρᾳ.(?)
Inscription Translation
Inscription Comment
Site
Sardis
Sector
AT
Trench
AT 10.3
Locus
AT 10.3 Locus 10
B-Grid Coordinates
W162.42 - W164.43 / S1226.36 - S1226.47 *99.54 - 99.25
Findspot
Artemis Temple, northern pteroma.
Description

Base of a cup.

Comments

The inscription is interpreted by the editors in the sense that the cup was dedicated “to Hera” and that it is the earliest evidence for the worship of this goddess at Sardis.

Yet, in Hellenistic times one would expect the dative Ἥραι being written with iota adscript. It may therefore seem more probable that the inscription is the genitivus possessivus Ἡρᾶ of the personal (theophoric) name Ἡρᾶς. LGPN VA, s.v., refers for its occurrence in Lydia to TAM V 2, 1203, 3 (first century BC). The present inscription would accordingly say that the cup was “Heras’s.”

See Also
Bibliography
N. Cahill and C. H. Greenewalt, jr., AJA 120 (2016), p. 479, fig. 8e.
Author
GP