This article discusses a brief inscription incised on a cup found on the Athenian Agora and which has been published in 1976. This graffito appears to be an Old Phrygian inscription, the first known so far on this side of the Aegean Sea. It corresponds to a new personal name, whose stem could be identical to that of Phrygian place names attested in Greek sources. An etymological hypothesis is suggested about the stem, which could reveal the Phrygian name of the “goat”. The object thus incised in the Phrygian alphabet may have belonged to a metic or a Phrygian travelling to Athens.

The excavations at the Tepecik settlement, which is situated East of Patara’s city center directly overlooking the ancient harbor, furnishes new and important data regarding the city’s largely unknown and much debated administrative organization in the 6th century BC. This evidence is based preliminarily on a pithos fragment found in the tower house’s eastern side, dated to ca. 500 BC, and bearing an inscription made ante cocturam in Lycian script. This graffito, which is one of the oldest inscriptions of the Lycian corpus, is incomplete but has eight legible letters that allow its reconstruction: it probably corresponds to the official title [pd]ḍẽnehm̃mi “ruler, commissioner”, attested in two other Lycian inscriptions. The graffito could indicate that the pithos was to be stored in the house of this official.

No abstract