Description: Upper part of a limestone
stele in the form of an aedicula, a relief of a female head in the surviving part of the niche
(w:
0.75 x h:
0.60 x d:
0.25).
Text: Inscribed on the architrave, on a surface much pitted and worn.
Letters: ave. 0.035-0.04; cursive epsilon; L for ἐτῶν.
Date: Perhaps first century CE
Findspot:
Berenike:
precise findspot unknown; photographed in 1925 'near Benghazi'.
Original location: Unknown.
Last recorded location:
Benghazi Museum
English translation
Translation by: Editors
. . . ] Klaudia (i.e. Claudia) Eirena aged 30.
Commentary
The surface is worn at the beginning and may have contained a date.
The reading of the nomen assumes that a hole in the stone before the final letter already existed when the inscription was cut, even though there has certainly been modern damage in the area; at the end of the cognomen the cutter seems to have abandoned his first attempt at final Α and left a space where he was working.
Bibliography: Reynolds in Rosenbaum, 1960, 291 and pl. ciii, 2, whence, with modifications by Reynolds, SEG 20.775, PHI 324525; SECir, 1961-1962, 101 and fig. 79; republished Reynolds, 1978, 31, whence SEG 28.1539.
Text constituted from: Transcription (Reynolds).
Images
Fig. 1. Face (Department of Antiquities, F. 678)