Archaic Cretan Inscriptions: Texts or Things?

Abstract

Archaic Crete has recently received much attention from historians and epigraphers (Seelentag, 2015; Gagarin & Perlman, 2016). Both these works recognise that Cretan legal inscriptions are both things and texts: what matters is not only what the Greek words on the inscriptions say but also how and where they were set up (in or near sanctuaries, sometimes forming part of the fabric of temples) and what the words are written on (generally stone). This paper explores further the role of inscriptions as things and considers the “biography” (sensu Kopytoff, 1986) of three of them: the Dreros kosmos inscription (Gagarin & Perlman, 2016, 200–7); the Praisos Eteocretan inscription (IC 3.6.1); and the Gortyn Law Code itself (IC 4.72). In all cases the archaeological context matters. In both Praisos (Bosanquet, 1902) and Dreros (Gaignerot Driessen, 2013) the inscriptions were deliberately destroyed when their respective political communities were brought to an end in the 2nd century BCE—a fact which demonstrates their symbolic importance for these two political communities. The Gortyn Law Code however was not destroyed but later incorporated into a Roman Odeion. This surely has implications for our understanding of social memory in ancient Crete.