• m14-572-10
    Inscribed Block with Raking Cornice (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)

Inscribed Block with Raking Cornice (associated with Wadi B Temple): Label for Pedimental Sculpture of Adramyttion?

Date
Early to mid-1st century AD? (ed. pr.); or later?, Roman
Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
IN82.034
Material
Marble, Stone
Object Type
Architecture, Inscription
Inscription Type
Varia
Inscription language
Greek
Inscription Text
		Ἀδραμύ-
		    τηον
Inscription Translation
Inscription Comment
Site
Sardis
Sector
Wadi B
Trench
Wadi B 82.1
B-Grid Coordinates
*144.62 - 144.08
Findspot
In front of the Wadi B Temple, in a layer of architectural destruction debris from the temple. Expedition compound.
Description

“Pediment block with raking cornice found in association with fragments of an early imperial temple tentatively identified as a sanctuary of the imperial cult” (SEG). The letters “are finished with the same preliminary tooling as the rest of the surface.” “There is a rough, broken (rather than worked) lump projecting from the surface…some kind of attached pedimental sculpture or ornament” (AJA 90, p. 55).

Dimensions
Letters: H. 0.08.
Comments

“C. Foss, ibidem 63–68, suggests that the block could have been part of a pediment supporting sculptures which symbolized the centers of conventus in the province of Asia, as Adramyttion was.…As L. Robert (Hellenica VII 206–38) has demonstrated…the conventus could play a role in the organization of the imperial cult of the province. Foss tentatively identifies the building with a provincial temple for Vespasian, since a tetrastyle temple appears on Sardian coins of this emperor” (SEG); see P. Herrmann, Chiron 23 (1993), p. 251 n. 60, and Burrell, Neokoroi, pp. 101–3.

The block is only half-finished; on the preliminary character of the letters see the lemma. The spelling -τηον instead of -τ(ε)ιον might point to a later date.

See Also
Bibliography
Ch. Ratté, Th. N. Howe, and C. Foss, AJA 90 (1986), pp. 54–55, pl. 3, fig. 3 (SEG 36, 1103).
Author
GP