Funerary relief
created: Transcription (Reynolds).
source date: Late first century BCE to early first century CE
language: ar; en; fr; de; grc; grc-Latn; el; he

Mentioned [...], 61, pl. LIV, A, and [...], 1, , whence [...], 1989.830, [...] 37.1701bis; [...], 2, whence [...], 2004.446, [...] 53.2055; [...], A.38, whence [...] 62.1795.19; further discussion by [...], 167.

Θεύδωρος Θευδώρω ἥρως

Theodoros son of Theodoros, hero

ثيودوروس (بن) ثيودوروس ، بطل

The figure on horseback, who may be pictured as an ephebe or a neos, is clearly deceased, and I take the stele to represent his funerary monument which, with the altar dedicated to a funerary cult, will have stood in the courtyard in front of his tomb, in the manner common in the Cyrene cemeteries, at any rate until early in the second century CE The courtyard normally also contained a half-figure of a mourning woman and the female figure here may represent her.

In the inscription the deceased is named and described as ἥρως, hero, i.e. a superhuman post mortem existence is attributed to him, as also to the subject of C.468. The panel was found in what might be described as a dump into which many stones from the adjacent cemetery might have been swept; but if dedication in the sanctuary is thought more likely, this divinisation deserves to be regarded as a genuine and comforting belief by his surviving family.

A dedication of this kind in the Sanctuary would presumably indicate that in some part thereof Kore’s identity with Persephone (locally Persephatta) as Queen of the Underworld was a feature of the cult.

It should be noted that the names preserve in Cyrenaean dialect forms (Θευ- for Θεο-, and -ω for -ου in the genitive singular masculine).