Dedicatory Inscriptions

Grâce à des exemples empruntés à l'Antiquité (Grèce) puis à l'époque contemporaine (Espagne, Wallonie, Grèce), on s'est attaché à comprendre comment le rite votif a pu évoluer au sein des manifestations de piété populaire.
En Grèce antique, le fonctionnement cultuel d’un sanctuaire a souvent été étudié dans son ensemble en tenant compte au mieux des divinités concernées et du personnel fonctionnaire, mais plus rarement des grands types de donateurs. Jamais néanmoins, on n'a observé de façon systématique ce qui fait le fondement même de la piété, c'est-à-dire les ex-voto. Quel type d'offrande donnait-on ? Pour quel motif ? Autant de questions auxquelles il a fallu tenter de répondre pour dégager les grands traits de ce rite de dédicace.
En passant ensuite à une étude diachronique comparatiste, il s'est agi de souligner combien la coutume de l'offrande est encore prégnante aujourd'hui : du Nord de la Grèce à l'Espagne en passant par la Wallonie ou Chypre, si les ex-voto changent parfois, la démarche, les motivations et les lieux de dépôt demeurent les mêmes. On note d'ailleurs que la frange entre la superstition, la magie et la religion est toujours aussi mince aujourd'hui que dans l'Antiquité.
C'est donc une pérennité de la démarche cultuelle qu'il est intéressant de démontrer  ici, au travers des textes antiques mentionnant les realia, et des objets votifs déposés actuellement dans les lieux de culte.

In this paper, under the light of a newly published ottoman register of 1564, we try to reconsider the context of the building and painting of the churches in the village Veltsista, near Ioannina. Thus, we conclude that the churches were built and decorated during a relatively prosperous era. We also establish that the church of the ‘Metamorphosis’ was a parish church, decorated by Mitrophanes, abbot of the ‘Philanthropinon’ monastery on the island of Ioannina. Furthermore, after examining the conditions of the beginning of the year 1568, we make the suggestion that the inscription of the ‘Metamorphosis’ church may be incorrect. But an on the spot transcription of the inscription proved that the correct date of it is in did the year 1568, in spite of the unfavorable coincidence.

Ιn this paper we edit forty epigraphs, which come fιom eleven villages called "Katsanochoria" and are situated ίη the southeast of the city of Ioannina, at a semi-mountainous area. The epigraphs, the majority of which is edited here for the fiIst time, come from all the churches of the area (about seventy in all). Fourteen are incised on stones on the walls of the churches and usually give us the date of foundation Fifteen aIe written on icons and seven on mural paintings and give us the date of painting. Finally four are carved on a censer, a chalice and a benediction cross. After the text of each epigraph, we comment on its contents and we give more details on the architectural features of each church. In order to achieve a better understanding of the epigraphs, first we tried to make a synthesis of our historical knowledge for the area until the late 16th century. Second we examined the history of the settlements, in which the churches were built and we tried to find out how the people managed to support financially their building activities. Finally we made an outline of the evolution of the architecture. Therefore, the conclusion can be drawn as follows: in the prosperous for all Europe 16th century, we have no historical material from the Katsanochoria. From the following years, though there was a general economic and demographic decline, and probably because there was a tendency towards herd breeding, the inhabitants of the Katsanochoria occupied themselves with the hide trade. Βy these means they managed to reserve the funds for the building of their churches. Later in the 17th century the crisis struck the area and so we have no information about the Katsanochoria in the period 1665-1695.

This paper deals with a series of rural demes located on both the west and the east coast of Attica and seeks to identify the cults practiced by each local deme population by examining and combining the epigraphic, literary, and archaeological evidence for each deme. It suggests a widespread practice of ‘rural’ cults, such as that of the Nymphs, Pan, and Hermes, in the demes situated on the west coast, whereas it appears that Artemis, Apollo and other Olympic gods played a leading role in the religious life of demes situated on the east coast. My assumption is that this situation can be connected to the presence of very ancient and significant sanctuaries on the east coast, which were intensely frequented since remote times. By contrast, the absence of religious centres of this scale and importance on the west coast led to a larger diffusion of 'minor' rural cults.

Este trabalho ocupa-se das dedicatórias autógrafas (ou de exemplar) de Machado de Assis. Salvo equívoco, nunca se realizou um levantamento exaustivo desses escritos, o que é curioso, haja vista o grande número de edições de "obras completas" do autor de Dom Casmurro e o interesse contínuo por seu acervo (biblioteca, manuscritos, etc.). Talvez nem seja injusto afirmar que, pelo menos editorialmente, as dedicatórias autógrafas oferecidas a Machado receberam mais atenção que aquelas elaboradas pelo próprio escritor. A comunicação pretende reunir esses textos circunstanciais (ou o que a nós chegou deles) e os comentar brevemente, refletindo sobre a presença desse paratexto na obra de Machado e em sua biografia. A fundamentação teórica é o trabalho de Gérard Genette, Paratextos editoriais (1987; 1. ed. brasileira, 2009).

Signed Dedications of Machado de Assis: This work focuses on Machado de Assis' signed (or of one copy) dedications. To our knowledge, no exhaustive survey of these texts has been undertaken, which is curious, given the large number of editions of " complete works " by the author of Dom Casmurro and the continued interest in his collection (library, manuscripts, etc.). Perhaps it is not unfair to say that, at least editorially, the signed dedications offered to Machado have received more attention than those written by the writer himself. This presentation intends to bring together these circumstantial texts of Machado (or what came to us from them) and to reflect briefly on the presence of these paratexts in Machado's oeuvre and biography. The theoretical foundation is the work of Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (1987, original French edition; published in English in 1997, and in Portuguese in 2009).

The aim of this paper is to consider the dedication to Pope Julius II of the first illustrated edition of Vitruvius, curated by the Humanist Scholar Fra Giocondo da Verona. Dedication analysis can take various paths: on the one hand it points out the reasons why Giocondo’s edition constitutes a turning point in Vitruvian studies, on the other, it raises issues concerning the choice of dedicatee, in the light of policy context.

The work of painters originating from the village Kapesovo, of the Ioannina region, was the subject of a Ph.D. thesis submitted to the University of Ioannina, by D. Konstantios. The author, among others, edits the content of twenty-five inscriptions written by the painters, in churches they worked at. In this paper we mention twelve more inscriptions by the same painters, already published by others, while rectifying some mistakes made in the edition of the other twenty-five. Finally we are offering a new interpretation of the content of the totality of the inscriptions, regarding mainly to the members of the family of the painters. The general conclusion is that there is only one family, numbering twelve of its members as painters, during the period 1728-1841.

The Latin alphabet that is engraved together with the many Lepontian inscriptions on the boulder CMS 1 (Carona, Bergamo), is the fifth found in Northern Italy in a non-Roman milieu: the other four are recorded in Este (one on a bronze tablet) and in Valcamonica (three engraved on rocks). They all can be compared for the presence of the e in the form of two parallel vertical lines and, if they are complete, for their ending with the letter x. The Carona alphabet shows mixed characters: most of the letters follows the standard Latin alphabet, but a and p are written in the Lugano alphabet (Lepontic). Epichoric
alphabets are absent in the Golasecca cultural area, while in the Paeloveneti and Camunnian ones they are frequent in ritual contexts, as sanctuaries and engraved rocks. The relation between alphabets and worship places has a long tradition in the Semitic milieu, from where it was transmitted, together with writing, to the Greek world and then to the Etruscan-Italic one. This connection seems to never last, for Latin alphabets inscribed on marble slabs are a recurrent character of the Jupiter Dolichenus sanctuaries, during the Roman imperial age.
At any rate alphabets are not models for the teaching of writing, but an expression of religious devotion. In fact,
the sequence of the alphabet letters is symbolically linked to the cycle of the seasons and to the demand of fecundity,
fertility, rebirth, blessing and protection. The alphabet of Carona reconnects to these symbolic values, given the
context of the boulder on which is engraved. This rock should have been the focus of a small natural sanctuary,
in relation with the water springs that surround it and the proximity to the Valsecca pass.

In: The PARI Journal, 15 (2): 15-37. A small selection of dedicatory texts on Classic Maya ceramics is composed by well-versed painter-scribes, but something is out of the ordinary. The calligraphic style and graphic intelligibility of the hieroglyphic signs used by these scribes indicate a high level of scribal competence (knowledge) and performance (usage). However, the order in which these particular dedicatory texts are written can be best described as “out of order.” By this I mean that these few texts do not conform to the common order of dedicatory texts on Classic Maya ceramics. On the surface, these texts can be simply categorized as errors or mistakes made by incompetent artists or scribes. Two of these texts are the subject of this essay, and I propose a solution for the actual reading order of both texts. I suggest that we need to look at the whole object to arrive at a probable solution for the actual reading order. Classic Maya ceramics were not static objects—they were dynamic; they were often manipulated (i.e., handled) on special occasions. I propose that the manipulation of the objects will reveal the actual reading order of these two dedicatory texts.

Syllabus, resource list, and assignments for an M.A. Seminar developed for the History Department at North Carolina State University in 2014, while I was in residence as a Postdoctoral Teaching Scholar.

"This course aims to provide an introduction the fields of epigraphy and paleography (as well as related disciplines), presenting the study of alphabetic Greek inscriptions as a useful tool for historians of the ancient world. Students will learn to reconcile disparate translations of Greek texts, and evaluate other scholars' dates, interpretations, and discussions of Greek inscriptions on a variety of media. In particular, facility with electronic resources and databases will be encouraged. Students enrolled in the course will produce one close study (and critical edition) of a Greek inscription for their midterm inscription project (worth 25% of the course grade), and will produce a longer discussion of a historical question dependent on inscriptional evidence for their final writing project (worth 35% of the course grade). A student presentation of an inscriptional case study (preferably connected to the student's final writing project, worth 25% of the course grade) will also be required of registered students."

Extensive excavations recently conducted at Merenda, the site of the ancient deme of Myrrhinous, led to the discovery of a dedicatory inscription by the priest Xenophon to Zeus Phratrios. Xenophon is to be identified with the homonymous individual who made a dedication to Apollo Pythios and had it inscribed on a rectangular marble pillar that was found at Merenda in 1948. These two inscriptions by Xenophon share several similarities, both in the shape, size and type of marble of their material supports and in the script, arrangement, and content of their texts. The letterings are comparable and suggest a date in the fourth century BCE. Both texts are metrical; they are arranged in two lines and have similar contents, both including the term 'mnemeion'. In both cases the text is inscribed on a quite flat, rectangular marble pillar that tapers above and ends in a squared capital, which only the more recently found document preserves. A close examination of these similarities and the analysis of the features and roles of Apollo Pythios and Zeus Phratrios in Attica suggest that the two dedications may have originally been set side by side and functioned as one votive/commemorative monument dedicated by Xenophon and placed within the sanctuary of Apollo Pythios.

At least from the 30's of 20th century, we acknowledge a term "Anonymous God" in the context of a group of ca. 250 Aramaic votive dedications from Palmyra, in which a proper name of a divinity does not appear. In this particular case, it is replaced by such special formulas as: “He who name is blessed forever”, “Lord of Universe” and “Merciful”. Moreover, bilingual – Graeco-Aramaic – dedications assimilate first twos expressions to Zeus Most High (Hypsistos) and Listener (Epekoos). The evidence reveals on the period of 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, the time of “mass epigraphic production” in the whole Roman Empire. They seem to have unique and very local character. However, the general phenomenon of replacement of the proper names of gods in Near East seems to be popular and the dedications from Hatra and Edessa could serve as indirect analogies to the Palmyrenean material. A problem of the anonymity of gods in the Palmyrenean case has to be reconsidered, taking into account the rhetoric, psychological and cultural approach. Moreover, the comparative study made on the large material not only Aramaic or Phoenician, but also Greek and Mesopotamian, throws doubt on a theory of Jewish influence on the Palmyrenean phenomenon. The aim of the poster is to show new regard on this particular epigraphic evidence in the framework of religious mentality of the Ancients.

This paper throws a light on dedication texts – gathered in items preserved in Emilia-Romagna‘s libraries – composed by the magister Filippo Beroaldo the Elder (1453-1505) and published in Fifteenth and Sixteenth centruries editions. It highlights the way the Italian humanist builds the net of relationships with others colleagues and with his students, who will become the next European élite.

A hitherto unnoticed inscribed image of a standing male figure in the Indian Museum, Kolkata, was recently published by Shyamalkanti Chakravarti. I subsequently had occasion to examine the piece. It is a seventh century image of a standing male figure holding a sturdy staff (daṇḍa) horizontally at the level of the groin. The accompanying inscription designates it as a donation of a nobleman (bhaṭṭāraka) hailing from Telyāḍhaka (modern Telhara in Bihar) and further records that the installation of the image was performed by the son of an oil merchant (tailika). Both the iconography and the inscription of this sculpture throw challenges of art historical and epigraphic analyses. The note suggests that the identity of the sculpture remains a riddle, in spite of the possibility of the imagery of this class being associated with multifarious ritual and
cultic traditions in different parts of the country. Further, the inscription provides a rather rare instance of a donation being installed/executed by a person other than the donor.

Inside the Lettere familiari (Bologna, 1786) of Lodovico Preti (1727-1810) can be found a brief but significant anthology of dedications. The examination of unpublished documents relating to Preti and to his family, preserved at the Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio of Bologna, allows to better understand the context of relationships from which the dedications arose, highlighting the considerable differences occurred
in change of the texts of letters from manuscript to the printed edition.