File(s) not publicly available

E01722: Greek dedicatory inscription to *Mary (Mother of Christ, S00033). Found at the island of Chios (the Aegean Islands). Exact provenance unknown. Possibly late antique.

online resource

posted on 2016-07-13, 00:00 authored by pnowakowski

+ Κοσταντῆνος + δοῦλος θεοῦ
κὲ τῆς ὑπεραγίας Θεοτόκου εκτοκουνο[
Μηνόκριτος Μηνογένου

2. ἐκ τόκου νο[ Zolotas

'+ Konstantinos +, servant of God and of the over-holy God-Bearer (Theotokos) (?) [- - -]. Menokritos, son of Menogenes.'

Text: Zolotas 1908, 246-247, no. 79.

History

Evidence ID

E01722

Saint Name

Mary, Mother of Christ : S00033

Related Saint Records

https://oxford.figshare.com/articles/Mary_Mother_of_Christ/13729186

Type of Evidence

Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)

Language

Greek

Evidence not before

500

Evidence not after

1300

Activity not before

500

Activity not after

1300

Place of Evidence - Region

Aegean islands and Cyprus

Place of Evidence - City, village, etc

Chios

Place of evidence - City name in other Language(s)

Chios Salamis Σαλαμίς Salamis Salamis Farmagusta Far Κωνσταντία Konstantia Constantia

Cult activities - Non Liturgical Practices and Customs

Prayer/supplication/invocation

Cult Activities - Protagonists in Cult and Narratives

Other lay individuals/ people

Source

A grey marble slab. H. 0.27 m; W. 0.59 m. Above the inscription there are carvings of two crosses and other unspecified decorations. The editor says that the third line might have been written by another hand, in an earlier period. Seen and copied by Georgios Zolotas at the Museum of the Gymnasium in Chios after 1886. Said to have been found at a citadel (phrourion).

Discussion

The inscription was authored by a certain Konstantinos, who named himself a servant of God and of the God-Bearer. The name 'Menokritos, son of Menogenes', written on the same stone, comes probably from a different, now lost, text. The meaning of the last word preserved in line 2, εκτοκουνο, is not clear, and the editor does not say whether the right-hand side of the stone was broken and lost when he examined it. This is, however, possible, and the line might need to be completed. The other option is that the last word in line 2 was erroneously read by the editor, or that the possibly illiterate stonecutter confused this word with the name Theotokos/'God-Bearer'. Dating: the sophisticated epithets of Mary suggest a fairly late date for the inscription, possibly the 6th/7th c. or even later.

Bibliography

Edition: Zolotas, G., Επιγραφαί Χίου ανέκδοτοι , Athena 20 (1908), 246-247, no. 79. Further reading: Kiourtzian, G., "Pietas insulariorum", [in:] Eupsychia: mélanges offerts à Hélène Ahrweiler, vol. 2 (Série Byzantina Sorbonensia 16, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1998), 375.