Greek and Latin Inscriptions in the Manisa Museum (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Greek and Latin Inscriptions in the Manisa Museum Kent J. Rigsby Hasan Malay . Greek and Latin Inscriptions in the Manisa Museum. Vienna, 1994. 192 pp. 99 plates. (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Denkschriften 237, Ergänzungsbande zu den Tituli Asiae Minoris 19) For well over a century, inscriptions found in the Hermus Valley in Lydia have been making their way to the museum at Manisa. Hasan Malay presents here a full inventory of this rich collection, stones deriving from the great cities (Sardes, Philadelphia, Daldis, Hierocaesarea, etc.) and from the numerous villages [End Page 167] within their territories. Malay has himself contributed substantially to the building of this collection through his explorations, and his familiarity with the region and its monuments is an essential component of this catalogue. In recent years the inscriptions of Lydia have received work of very high quality which is readily available to readers, and Malay has made the laudable decision to include only what must be included in order to complete the published record on the museum holdings: new texts are given description, text, commentary, and photograph; already published texts with no photograph in print have a brief description, lemma, and photograph but no text; others, only a description and up-to-date lemma without photograph or text (except where Malay has improved the readings, e.g., nos. 39, 368, 380). Malay has shown admirable discipline in not filling our libraries with redundant matter. The material is organized by type of text, except for a twenty-page addendum of stones that arrived during the year that publication was in progress. The statistics: 561 entries, of which 190 are new texts; twelve of these have been held for impending separate publication; four texts are in Lydian; there is little Latin (no. 470; bilingual, nos. 231, 520 [a new illustration of the bilingualism of Imperial freedmen; cf. Robert, Laodicée 325-26], and 523, an edict). Metrical texts are few (nos. 51, 318, 354). Dates range from the fourth century B.C. (no. 515, fragment of an Aeolic decree, nearly stoichedon) to the twelfth A.D., but are mostly Roman Imperial; for many stones the exact provenance is uncertain. The lemmas, while not genetic in form, are thorough and current; the commentaries address essentials with efficiency. Careful indexes are provided (only to the texts actually printed), also a detailed concordance to past publications, and two clear maps showing known provenances. Some of these texts will be taken up in the course of the completion of TAM V by Georg Petzl. Note that Petzl's "Beichtinschriften" (= EpigrAnat 22) appeared simultaneously; a number of those inscriptions are in the Manisa Museum, and Petzl was able to consult and cite Malay's manuscript in completing his own work. The photographs are uniformly excellent (nos. 360 and 362 have been badly cropped, cutting off some text) and constitute an important new body of evidence for the history of art in western Anatolia in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods. These mostly are reliefs (no. 161 is especially rich, and obscure owing to weathering; no. 58 is a Nike in the round; no. 336 is incised and perhaps unfinished). The volume offers pleasures for diverse agendas. New villages are attested (nos. 38 and 184, 48, 51), a known one located (no. 31); a new phratry inscription (no. 244) joins others from the northeastern part of Lydia. We have a new sundial (no. 25), and a woman who lived to be a hundred (no. 465). Foreign ethnics are few. No. 536, from Dareioukome, is a grave monument for Apollonius set up by his wife, Tyche, perhaps in the second century or earlier, ' ΤΩ[. . . ]ΔOYPHNΩ; the majuscules are properly cautious, and Malay cites Dura only in the commentary; there is scarcely space but consider Τω[βίου], whatever the likelihood of a Jew from Parthian Dura settling by the Hermus. [End Page 168] A number of new cults and divine epithets are revealed. Zeus Antigoneios (nos. 69-74, variously spelled) Malay traces to the Antigonid dynasty and Macedonian soldiers settled in Lydia in the Hellenistic period. This seems to me unlikely, in an area never under Antigonid rule even briefly, and I suspect rather that the epithet...