Newinscriptions from Tyras and Olbia

Abstract

The ancient writing tradition has left a relatively small number of works on the history of the South and West of Ukraine. Accordingly, the findings of inscriptions are very important for the reconstruction of the historical process of the region. The article is devoted to the first publication of a fragmentary marmour plates with an inscriptions from Tyras and Olbia Pontica. The inscriptions are kept in a private collection in Ukraine. Scientific methods of auxiliary historical disciplines, mainly paleography, were used for the research. The letters preserved in the Tyras inscription does not contain any distinct palaeographic features, and thus, palaeographically, this script is widely dated from the late 3rd century BC to the 2nd century AD. The second and third lines of the fragment of the inscription contain, probably, the formula: «... The Council and people of Tyras under archon so-and-so, son of so-and-so...». Accordingly, the fragmentary inscription from Tyras, probebly, is a fragment of the honorary decree of this ancient city. Unfortunately, the renewal of the second line, in which a fragment of a historical person’s name is seen, has many other variants of renewal. For the interpretation and reconstruction of the other inscription the area of its finding, which in the first centuries AD was the sacral zone of Achilles, is of decisive importance; such a zone existed in the chora of Olbia. For paleographic signs the inscription from the chora of Olbia is dated to the first half of the 1st century AD. This is a fragment of the lower part of the dedication to Achilles Pontarch by the Collegium of Archonts of Olbia. The dedicatory formula contains a very rare term ἡ πολυκαρπία – abundance of fruit. The presence of a profiled frame on the reverse side of the dedication to Achilles confirms its reuse. Accordingly, our dedication to Achilles Pontarch is probably one of the earliest.