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July 2003-July 2010InteractiveDig Sagalassos
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Werner Eck and Peter Eich study inscription fragments in the excavation house garden.

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The hand of an emperor clasping a parazonium (parade sword)

Photos courtesy Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project. Click on images to enlarge.
by Marc Waelkens

Epigraphical Studies

Last week Werner Eck and Peter Eich from the University of Köln (Germany) participated for the first time in the Sagalassos project, joining us after the premature death of our former epigraphist, H. De Vijver. Besides pubishing individual important new inscriptions in scholarly journals, they will also prepare a complete volume of all inscriptions, old and new ever recorded at Sagalassos and in its vast territory. During the week, they focused on already known and, especially, on newly discovered inscriptions, many of them coming from the Hadrianic Nymphaeum (see Hadrianic Nymphaeum, July 4-August 5) and the Lower Agora. Almost all of the texts belonged to dedications or honorific inscriptions on pedestals or bases originally carrying marble or bronze statuary. Most of them occupied one of the niches in the nymphaeum's back wall and many had from a later transformation wholes cut through their lower sections in order to let the water flow freely from them. One of the most important texts (see Hadrianic Nymphaeum, July 18-22) was on a tall statue base, found almost in situ in front of the nymphaeum. It carries the first completely Latin text ever found at Sagalassos. The pedestal must have carried the statue of an emperor, whose name unfortunately can no longer be read, but who must have reigned during the later 3rd, at the latest the early fourth century A.D. The marble statue of which the hands clasping a ceremonial sword were found last week (see Sculptural Studies, July 25-29) and inscription were set up by a contemporary but previously unknown governor of the province Pamphylia, whose name could be identified as Attius Cornelianus. He belonged to a new type of governor, selected from a different social class than was the case previously. The language of the inscription also testifies to the fact that in the Greek East during the later third century, governors used more and more Latin for the official representation of the Imperial power.

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