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The paper is devoted to such a unique phenomenon of so-called written or fixed folklore, as Ukrainian epigraphic containing a specific verbal formula “I was embroidering the towel with a sincere hand and praying to God for fate and godsend” which were popular at the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Considering the communication of these towels according to the well-known multimodal scheme, the author states that such with inscriptions could use all five modes (spatial, visual, linguistic, aural, and gestural one), having already become not quite in its traditional sense. On the one hand, these embroidered towels functioned as drawings or open books (locating on the wall with two hanging ends). On the other hand, they also could be gifted for the road, thus symbolizing the path, as it was typical for more traditional and older samples. Concerning modern interpretation of these towels, hybrid beliefs and identities are frequently connected with them. In addition, the article claims that ’ inscriptions, functioning simultaneously in several roles (in particular, they could be both embroidered and sung), provoke us to develop more deeply the theory of speech acts in linguistic pragmatics.

This article examines the phenomenon of the so-called royal tamga signs issued on stone stelae in the Bosporan Kingdom in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Tamgas were symbols commonly used by Eurasian nomads throughout the first millennium BCE. The appearance of tamgas in the northern shores of the Black Sea in the 2nd/1st BCE, followed by their adoption into the Greek epigraphic culture of the kingdom, represents an intriguing example of symbolic integration and another step in the formation of Bosporan culture. Research on cultural interactions between the inhabitants of the Bosporus has rarely focused on epigraphic material in its own right. Analyzing a small group of public stone slabs that feature tamgas, this article contributes to existing studies on numerous private funerary reliefs. Furthermore, the current work aims to incorporate several examples of stelae with royal tamga signs into the growing interest in syncretism, which is occurring in other epigraphic cultures of the Greco-Roman world. The case of the Bosporan Kingdom shows that such processes can also occur in places where no literate culture had previously been firmly established.

This article revisits the question of how the epigraphic culture of the fifth-century BC Athenian Empire impacted on the epigraphic cultures of other communities. Through consideration of the late fifth-century epigraphic cultures of Thasos and Rhodes, it argues that allied communities interacted with the epigraphic manifestations of Athenian authority in different ways, producing diverse epigraphic responses. Further, it argues that the first traces of the shift from the heterogeneity of archaic epigraphic cultures to the epigraphic convergence of the late classical world can be found in the tension between local and Athenian influences in late fifth-century public inscription beyond Athens.

Occupation of Mitzpe Shivta in the Negev Desert coincided with times of economic and social upheaval and counterculture movements during the sixth and seventh centuries AD. Inscriptions and symbols found in rock-hewn rooms in the region indicate that while the agricultural economy declined during the late Byzantine period, pilgrimage and monasticism prospered.

Se presenta una singular jarra cerámica de época altoimperial depositada en una inhumación que fue descubierta en una de las áreas funerarias de Augusta Emerita, capital de la Lusitania. El interés de la pieza radica en presentar varios mensajes esgrafiados, entre los que se destaca el comienzo de un alfabeto griego así como una viñeta de carácter obsceno. Palabras clave Grafitos, cerámica, hábitos epigráficos, abecedario, escena erótica.

The background to Sardeis’ defeat to Smyrna over the right to Asia’s second neokoros temple in 26 CE (Tac. Ann. 4.55–56) can be illuminated through the career of the prominent Sardian Menogenes son of Isidoros, as recorded in his honorific stele (I.Sardis 8). A re-dating of his first term as ekdikos of the koinon of Asia (from 5/4 to 6/5 BCE) reveals even more starkly the stele’s ideological significance as a monument reflecting Sardeis’ concern over its regional eminence under Augustus and Tiberius, as this was increasingly challenged by the existence of a provincial koinon based at Pergamon.

Between the last century BC and the fourth century AD the nomads of the basalt deserts of southern Syria, Jordan, and northern Saudi Arabia learnt to read and write for the only time in their history before the present day. They covered the desert rocks with tens of thousands of graffiti, which tell us much about their way of life, their society, their relations with each other, with the Romans, Nabataeans, and others, and their personal feelings. However, there have been few systematic surveys to record them. Instead, many expeditions have moved from landmark to landmark, making hand copies or photographs of only some of the texts and no accurate record of their exact location. This has resulted in the loss of a great deal of data and this article explains the need for systematic and complete surveys of this material, which is of great importance historically, linguistically, and ethnologically.

Abstract An incomplete Latin glossary attributed to 'Imogontes' in the only known manuscript (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urb.lat. 452) is, in fact, a copy of a text that Ciriaco d'Ancona found at Monza on 27 November, 1442. From the transmission histories of the other texts found with 'Imogontes', I suggest that Ciriaco put two copies of the text into circulation; although those copies travelled widely and in the company of other texts that were frequently copied, they drew almost no interest whatsoever from later readers. Although 'Imogontes' turns out to be a ghost, the text itself gives yet more information about the interests and obsessions of Ciriaco.

Building inscriptions are not a good proxy for building activity or, by extension, prosperity. In the part of Roman North Africa where they are the most common, the majority of surviving building inscriptions document the construction of religious buildings by holders of local priesthoods, usually of the imperial cult. The rise of such texts in the second century a.d., and their demise in the early third century, have no parallel in the epigraphic evidence for other types of construction, and should not be used as evidence for the pace of construction overall. Rather than economic change, these developments reflect shifts in the prospects of aspirational local elites, for whom priesthoods served as springboards to more prestigious positions. These positions were linked to Carthage through administrative arrangements that made this city the metropolis for scores of dependent towns and their ambitious elites.