An Inscription from Kythera

Abstract

While collecting information about the early history of Kythera I recently came across a short communication from Leake in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, Vol. IV (new series), 1853. It is in the form of a letter to the Secretary, and entitled ‘ Some remarks on the Island Cerigo, anciently Cythera,’ and reproduces an extract translated by Mr. Hamilton from a Memoir on the island sent to the latter by Mr. Calucci, an inhabitant of Kythera, on Oct. 3rd, 1849. On p. 4 he gives a copy of an inscribed stone found at Palaiopoli (Scandeia) which he describes thus: ‘ A small rectangular piece of hard white stone, one inch (sic) in length and ten lines thick; its lower surface has deep cuttings in it so as to form five half cylinders. On the upper surface, which is highly polished, is the inscription in five lines represented in the annexed drawing (Fig. 2). The measurement given appears impossibly small and must be a mistranslation of the original Greek (or Italian).The paper is known to Pauly-Wissowa. Weil (AM v, 1880, pp. 293 f.) mentions it and copies the late Greek inscription also illustrated there, but takes no notice of our inscription, and no scholar interested in Minoan or early Asia Minor scripts seems to have any knowledge of it. Some, but not all, of the signs are found in the Minoan linear script, a few also in the Cypriote syllabary.