<rs type="textType">Funerary</rs> inscription for Aba

Joyce M. Reynolds2007

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Originally published in McCabe (1993).

 English French German Ancient Greek Transliterated Greek Modern Greek Italian Latin Spanish Turkish AsiaTurkeyAphrodisiasGeyre 2007-07-10cmrDONE2007-02-08Charlotte TupmanHand tidiedGBhand tidied 2005-12-13Elliott HallBatch converted Word2XML
Description of Monument

White marble block (0.41 x 0.37 x depth not measurable). The upper left corner and all edges are chipped, and there is a crack across the lower right corner.

Description of Text .

Inscribed on the face, within a partly smoothed area

Letters

0.02-0.03; theta and omicron smaller than the rest

Date

First century B.C. to first century A.D.(lettering)

Edition Ἄβα Ἀτραπάτου γυνὴ δὲ Ἀθηναγόρου τοῦ Μηνοδότου Κασταίου χαῖρε
Apparatus

It is not clear to which of the two masculine names Kastaios was attached, but there is some indication in Aphrodisian practice that it would probably be Athenagoras.

Translation

Aba, (daughter of) Atrapatos, and wife of Athenagoras, son of Menodotos, also called Kastaios. Farewell.

Commentary

The funerary formula accords with a comparatively early date (cf also Robert, loc. cit.); the names show interestingly various but non-Roman features.

Aba seems to be an indigenous name attested both elsewhere in Caria and also in Cilicia and Phrygia (see Zgusta, Kleinasiatischen Personennamen (Prague, 1984), especially section 1, Blümel, Die Inschriften der rhodischen Peraia (Bonn, 1991). Atrapates is Iranian. Athenagoras and Menodotos are Greek, and in fairly common use at Aphrodisias, (see name index), notably in a prominent family of the first and second centuries A.D. which inluded a Mithridates son of Athenagoras (see 12.410). Mithridates, like Atrapates, is Itranian, and both are clearly survivals from the Persian occupation of Asia Minor.

Kastaios is probably an indigenous personal name (so Buckler, Appendix V to Sardis 6.2), but has been seen by some as a demotic (Brandenstein in RE 6, s.v. Karische Sprache, 140f, 141); there is however no clear evidence for the use of demotics at Aphrodisias.

Locations

Walls, South-west: just east of 12.706 (=MAMA 468). Unknown Findspot

Text Constituted From

Reichel squeeze and notebook; transcription (Reynolds); publications.

History of Recording

Copied by Radet; by Reichel (R.I.36a); recorded by the MAMA expedition; by the NYU expedition.

Bibliography

Published by Radet, BCH 14, 1890, 237, no. 12; published by Cormack from the MAMA records, MAMA 8, no. 532, whence McCabe PHI Aphrodisias 402 , Robert, BCH 107 (1983), 505.

Photographs

Face (1973)

Representations

Reichel notebook, I, 36