• m14-560-10
    Inscribed Plinth Fragments (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)

Inscribed Plinth Fragments (from Synagogue, Forecourt): Votive Inscription set up by a woman

Date
4th–6th century AD (Ameling); cf. no. 486 on Synagogue dating., Roman
Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
IN62.267
Material
Marble, Stone
Object Type
Inscription
Inscription Type
Religious Inscription
Inscription language
Greek
Inscription Text
	[ -  -  -  ] ὑπὲρ τεκέων τε καὶ ἀνδ[ρῶν(?)]
Inscription Translation
“[- - -] on behalf of children as well as husbands(?)[- - -].”
Inscription Comment
Site
Sardis
Sector
Syn
Trench
RT 62
Locus
Syn FC Above Floor
B-Grid Coordinates
E101.50 / N12
Findspot
Synagogue, Forecourt.
Description

Two fragments of a plinth of marble; both fragments are broken at left and right. The inscription is on one lateral face in one line.

Dimensions
H. 0.09, W. 0.90, Th. 0.32, H. of letters 0.05.
Comments

[ - - - ] ὑπὲρ τεκέων τε καὶ ἀνδ[ρῶν(?)]: my reading, having noticed—contra earlier editors—that the two fragments are joining. Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica 9, 139–41, writes that the knees of all the Trojan women were trembling while they were praying for (their) children as well as their husbands and brothers and sisters: πάσῃσι δὲ γυῖα / ἔτρεμεν εὐχομένῃσιν ὑπὲρ τεκέων τε καὶ ἀνδρῶν / ἠδὲ κασιγνήτων. The present dactylic fragment may, like in Quintus, also be the end of a verse; instead of ἀνδ[ρῶν], the singular ἀνδ[ρός] is a possible alternative. Children and husband(s) were apparently beneficiaries of the vow of a woman (or women).

[ - - - ] ὑπὲρ τε κὲ [τῶν θυγατέρ]ων τε κα̣ὶ ἀνδ̣[ρῶν? - - ] (“…on behalf of his (daughter?) and their husbands(?)…”) Kroll and SEG; [ - - - ] ὑπὲρ τεκέ[ων - - ]ων τε καὶ ἀνδ[ρός - - ] (“wegen der Eltern [inadvertently instead of ‘Kinder’] …und des Mannes”), Ameling.

See Also
Bibliography
Kroll, “Inscr. Synagogue,” pp. 45–46, no. 73; and p. 122, fig. 75 (Ameling, Inscr. Jud. Or. II, p. 293, no. 139; SEG 51, 1674); G. Petzl, “Epigraphische Kleinarbeit. Zu Inschriften der Synagoge von Sardeis” (in Vir doctus anatolicus. Studies in memory of Sencer Şahin, ed. Burak Takmer, Ebru N. Akdoğu Arca, and Nuray Gökalp Özdil [2016], pp. 708–13), pp. 710–11, no. 1.
Author
GP