BMCR 2024.04.26

New approaches to the materiality of text in the ancient Mediterranean: from monuments and buildings to small portable objects

, , New approaches to the materiality of text in the ancient Mediterranean: from monuments and buildings to small portable objects. Archaeology of the Mediterranean world, 4. Turnhout: Brepols, 2023. Pp. 262. ISBN 9782503601564.

Review by

[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]

 

This collective volume brings together thirteen studies devoted to the materiality of ancient texts, with an introduction by the two editors and an Afterword by Michael Squire. The book is explicitly in line with the perspectives framed by the material turn, the new interest in the humanities and social sciences (SSH) in the production and reception of objects that has recently given the sciences of Greek and Roman antiquity several collectives[1].

Contrary to what the title might suggest, the book’s originality lies not so much in its choice of geographical scale (nine chapters focus exclusively on the Greek world (chs. 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 14), and three chapters (2, 6 and 11) deal with Greek inscriptions in relation to others) as it lies in the choice of inscriptions studied, and particularly in the consideration of “portable” inscriptions, engraved on small objects such as vases (ch. 3), ostraca (ch. 4), coins (ch. 6), curse tablets (ch. 9) or jewelry (ch. 10). These objects enrich the usual questionnaire of classicists confronted with inscribed texts, as they offer case studies where writing is not necessarily intended to deliver a message to a reader. We propose to briefly summarize each contribution before making a few general remarks on the book’s great qualities.

The first chapter is an introduction to the volume. E. Angliker and I. Bultrighini define materiality as “both the physical material preserving the text and the cultural and social context in which the artifact existed” (p. 20). They then review the historical conditions that previously led specialists to separate the study of inscriptions from that of their medium, and the recent developments in the SSH that now enable the materiality of writing to be taken into consideration. Finally, they introduce the various chapters and outline the organization of the book.

The first two sections of the book bring together chapters on inscriptions on portable objects. The second chapter examines the relationship between cuneiform and Cypro-Minoan tablets, mainly from the 13th century BCE. Through comparisons of inscribed tablets, the study of writing tools and the circulation of scribes, Philippa M. Steele and Philip J. Boyes explores the relationship between types of writing and written language. It also shows Ugarit’s role as a melting pot for a wide range of writing practices, which spread throughout the region. Chapter 3 is devoted to the anonymous painter associated with the potter Brygos[2]. Gilberto Da Silva Francisco draws attention to a little-known pelike from Lisbon and shows the aesthetic role of writing on attic vases.

The next chapter focuses on the upper part of an amphora found in Egypt’s eastern desert. This object bears a list of two-syllabes words beginning with pi, suggesting it served as a school exercise. According to Julia Lougovaya, since the finely crafted ostraca must have been engraved by an adult, it would indicate that uneducated adults needed to learn to write once in the desert, at least to obtain supplies.

In chapter 5, Dario Calomino examines the public reception of images struck on Roman coins and shows that these images are sometimes charged with meaning by their users: coins bearing the effigies of emperors considered virtuous are sometimes kept to make wishes. Calomino also notes the actions of the public on coins, such as transforming a coin into a playing token, or in the case of coins destroyed or mutilated to mark disapproval of an emperor’s policies.

Nicola Reggiani’s chapter (6) looks at the rise of books in classical Greece. It distinguishes between scrolls, intended for preserving traditional oral information, and codex-type media, intended for temporary information. Reggiani observes, however, that the two functions gradually merged, because the spread of reading skills to less privileged populations came to favor the cheapest medium, i.e. the codex. By the end of Antiquity, the codex prevailed, sometimes in papyrus for informal and domestic works, sometimes in parchment for literary and canonical works.

The next two contributions deal with monumental inscriptions. Irene Salvo (ch. 7) studies gender in the “confession stelae” (a misnomer, but still retained by convention, p. 112) of western Anatolia. Salvo shows that these steles are part of an arbitration process involving the dedicatee and the cult personnel. These monuments are not the votive culmination of a ritual, but part of a problem-solving process. Salvo shows that women act in the same way as men, without constituting a separate group. These stelae provide important evidence of the ability of some women to interact with priests, cult personnel and the entire village community.

Naomi Carless Unwin (ch. 8) studies Archaic and Classical inscriptions, which in later periods became historical monuments. This phenomenon is particularly evident when inscriptions are reused. In Sardis, for instance, a bilingual Greek-Lydian inscription was reused in Imperial times as a way of celebrating the city’s Lydian past. It is just as apparent when official documents are collected and engraved retroactively, such as in the case of cities’ correspondence wrongly called archives (e.g. the “archives” of Aphrodisias). The article clearly raises the question of the audience targeted by these displays, and casts doubt on their legibility. The conclusion is that both practices, reuse, and retroactive inscription, indicate an interest in staging the past in the civic landscape. Above all, they are more general marks of the city’s antiquity. These antique inscriptions don’t need to be read to convey an effective message.

Section IV is devoted to the material relationship between inscriptions and a human body. Chapter 9, by Jessica Lamont, focuses on curses inscribed on strips of lead, a pliable material easy to melt, cut and incise. But lead is also chosen for its material properties, i.e. worthlessness, and coldness, whatever one wishes to confer to the target of the spell. The metal may even be more important than the text, as tablets of curses can be found buried and nailed, but not inscribed: perhaps because the oral curse was enough? Once the tablet has been inscribed, rituals can be applied to it, such as folding it, nailing it or placing it in a tomb, to put the tablet closer to the chthonic deities. Curses are a perfect example of the need for material study of inscribed texts.

Sean V. Leatherbury studies the inscriptions “φῶς ζωή” (the “light, life” formula) adorning crosses in Late Antiquity (ch. 10). First attested in the catacombs of Rome in 238 CE, the formula appears for the first time outside a funerary context in the beginning of the 5th c. CE at Aphrodisias. The meaning of these 6 characters lies not in the text but in its reference to Christian culture (cf. John, I, 4). In the 6th century, the formula was used to decorate jewelry in the shape of a cross, most often on the face that remained against the body, hidden from the eyes of onlookers. This gave the inscription the function of an amulet, adding extra value to a cross, protecting the wearer and guaranteeing salvation. In the case of gold crosses, the material reinforces the idea of light (phôs) and therefore life (zôê).

Paweł Nowakowski then proposes an article devoted to the dedications of benefactors in early churches in the Near East (ch. 11). Some texts were placed near the holiest sites of the buildings, even if this meant that they were inaccessible to most of the population. This could mean that those who commissioned the inscription saw it as a substitute for themselves: their inscription placed near sacred spaces would grant them a form of physical proximity to these places. The many examples given show that a dedication can serve to embody the presence of the dedicator on a site.

The final chapters are devoted to the study of epigrams. Joseph W. Day (ch. 12) shows that, from the end of the Archaic period onwards, elegy became the standard form for epigrams for pragmatic reasons. Firstly, because elegy uses a dialogic grammar, conducive to dialogue, as when a passer-by vocalizes an epigram that challenges him in direct speech. Secondly, elegy plays on feelings, with many words built with the prefix phil-. A Boeotian funerary stele (SEG 49, 505A), for instance, is dedicated to a deceased person (represented on the stele as erômenos), replacing an old philemosune. Finally, the elegy is particularly well-suited to image description, making it possible to combine the first two characteristics. The choice of elegy allows epigrams to complement the objects on which they are inscribed. This creates a relationship between the objects and the passers-by, playing on emotions to get the viewer to react as the writer would have wished.

The next chapter is undoubtedly the most disconcerting. In it Sherry (Chiayi) Lee comments on the epigrams of the Hellenistic poetess Nossis, placing them in the context of female ritual practices in the city of Locri Epizefiri. The article identifies the women mentioned in Nossis’ poems as prostitutes involved in the cult of Aphrodite in general and “sacred prostitution” in particular. Confronting a poetic tradition with archaeological data to better depict the religious landscape of Locri Epizefiri is undoubtedly a good idea. However, we might regret the application of a widespread prism in the bibliography, hastily reducing every Greek woman to a potential prostitute, but also, and above all, the unexpected (to say the least) mobilization, of an idea of “sacred prostitution”, now perfectly refuted[3].

In the 14th and final chapter, Federica Sciocolone studies the processes of monstratio ad oculos and deixis am phantasma in epigrams, allowing us to observe the transition from a tradition of performance to literary poetry, through a process of decontextualization and intextualization. If one can expect the former stylistic device to be more appropriate to engraved epigrams and the latter to literary poetry, the comparison of inscribed hymns from the Hellenistic and Imperial periods with literary hymns shows the effectiveness of certain deixis am phantasma in both natures of inscribed epigrams, and, thus, the permeability of the two categories.

Michael Squire’s afterword (ch. 15) concludes with a reminder of the issues raised by the question of the materiality of inscribed texts in antiquity, and then highlights some aspects of the present contributions, in particular the ability of writing to enhance the message conveyed by portable objects, and conversely the commitment of a given material support to the service of an inscribed message. Finally, we would like to underline the high quality of this volume, and its extensive illustrations (as witnessed by the impressive list of illustrations, p. 7-13). An index of ancient proper nouns and the most relevant common nouns, p. 255-260 closes the book. The various chapters are coherent, well-articulated and all accompanied by an abundant bibliography, which frequently gives a place to the humannd social sciences (e.g. W. Ong (ch. 1); P. Bourdieu (ch. 7 and 9); J. Butler (ch. 7); T. Ingold, (ch. 8 and 9); K. Bühler (ch. 14)), demonstrating the wealth of epigraphic documentation that can be used to fuel reflections on issues that go beyond the framework of the sciences of Antiquity.

 

Authors and Titles

  1. Erica Angliker and Ilaria Bultrighini, “Introduction. The Material Turn in the Study of Ancient Texts”

I. Texts on Portable Objects – Tablets, Vases, Ostraca, and the Inscribing Hand

  1. Philippa M. Steele and Philip J. Boyes, “A Comparative Approach to Methods of Inscribing Clay Tablets. Interaction and Innovation in Cyprus and Ugarit”
  2. Gilberto Da Silva Francisco, “The Brygos Painter’s Miswritten Signature on the Lancaster pelike”
  3. Julia Lougovaya, “A Lesson in a Desert Quarry. A Material Approach to a School Ostracon”

II. Texts on Portable Objects – Coins, Rolls, Codices, and the Authoritativeness of Texts

  1. Dario Calomino, “Inspecto nummo…The Materiality of Coin Imagery and Inscriptions in the Roman World”
  2. Nicola Reggiani, “What is a Book? The Ideology of Materiality in Ancient Greek and Roman Writing Technology”

III. Texts on Monuments and Buildings – Spaces and Contexts of Ancient Inscriptions

  1. Irene Salvo, “Women in Trouble, and the Habit of Objectifying a Text in the So-Called Confession Inscriptions”
  2. Naomi Carless Unwin, “Epigraphy and the Power of Precedence in Asia Minor”

IV. Texts that Move Through Media – Body and Text

  1. Jessica Lamont, “Inscribed Materialities. Greek Curse Tablets”
  2. Sean V. Leatherbury, “Formulating Faith on Objects and Buildings. The ‘Light, Life’ Formula in Late Antiquity”
  3. Paweł Nowakowski, “‘And the Word Was Made flesh’. Greek and Aramaic Inscriptions as Substitutes for the Physical Presence of Benefactors in Eastern Christian Sanctuaries”.

V. Texts that Move through Media – Greek Literary and Inscriptional Epigram

  1. Joseph W. Day, “Elegy, Epigram, and the Complementarity of Text and Monument”
  2. Sherry (Chiayi) Lee, “From Courtesans, to Goddesses. The Materialization of Ritual Practice in Nossis’s Votive Epigrams”
  3. Federica Scicolone, “Strategies of Ocular and Imaginary Deixis in Greek Epigrams”
  1. Michael Squire, “Afterword”

 

Notes

[1] I. Berti, K. Bolle, F. Opdenhoff et F. Stroth (ed.), Writing Matters: Presenting and Perceiving Monumental Inscriptions in Antiquity and the MiddleAges, Berlin and Boston, De Gruyter, 2017 ; A. Petrovic, I. Petrovic and E. Thomas (ed.), The Materiality of Text: Placement, Perception, and Presence of Inscribed Texts in Classical Antiquity, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2018 ; A. Chabod et P. Cournarie (ed.), Visibilité, lisibilité, efficacité : les inscriptions monumentales en Grèce et à Rome, Cahiers des études anciennes 59, 2022.

[2] The influence of F. Lissarrague’s work is apparent, specially the recently republished online: F. Lissarrague, “Graphein : écrire et dessiner”, Images Re-vues,  20, 2023 : https://journals.openedition.org/imagesrevues/14411

[3] Lee quotes Budin, S., The Myth of Sacred Prostiution in Antiquity, Cambridge 2008 without seeming to take it into account. We can add, among others:  V. Pirenne‑Delforge, L’Aphrodite grecque. Contribution à l’étude de ses cultes et de sa personnalité dans le panthéon archaïque et classique, Liège 1994, p. 104‑127 et passim et G. Pironti, Entre ciel et guerre : figures d’Aphrodite en Grèce ancienne, Liège 2007, p. 249‑250.