Description: Approximately rectangular limestone stele
with a projecting above showing rough incisions for two eyes, a nose and a mouth, broken away below.
(w:
0.11 x h:
0.155 x d:
0.05).
Text: Inscribed on one face, a between two lines incised across the upper part of the stone and b below that.
Letters: a: 0.08 - 0.017
(In line 1 the fourth letter is unrecognizable - possibly for M or N in ligature. In line 2 the uprights of letters 2 and 5 are doubly incised, the two lines not quite parallel, and letter 6, apparently a sigma, is reversed. b: omicron is diamond shaped, sigma is lunate )
Date: Not determinable
Findspot:
Gebel Akhdar: East of Cyrene:
Chersis, cemetery; found in 1988 by Dr Daoud Halag.
Original location: Unknown
Last recorded location:
Cyrene Museum
(Inv. no. 3640)
Apparatus
1: Μ could be ΝΝ in ligature ; Σ is reversedCommentary
The first letters of a.2 strongly suggest that the cutter was presenting letters rather than words. The reversed sigma (line 2) occurs in Libyan texts in the Maghreb (e.g. J.-B. Chabot, Recueil des inscriptions libyques nos. 1, 2, 1122, 1123: available at Internet Archive).
Bibliography: Mohamed-Reynolds, 1995, 9, whence Dobias-Lalou, Bulletin Épigraphique, 1997.711, SEG 45.2162
Text constituted from: Transcription (Reynolds).
Images
Fig. 1. Face (C.Dobias-Lalou, 2020: MFA DSC02041)