The Stone of Terpon or Pebble of Antibes (Galet d'Antibes) is an ancient artifact excavated near the seawall of Antibes, France (the ancient Antipolis) in 1866.https://web.archive.org/web/20071028165541/http://www.archeoprovence.com/biblio/f.htm The stone is held in the Musée d’Histoire et d’Archéologie adjacent to that same seawall in Antibes. The stone's inscription has been dated to between 450 and 425 BC,[http://poinikastas.csad.ox.ac.uk/4DLink3/4DACTION/LSAGwebDisplayInscription?searchTerm=WC&searchType=browse&searchField=region&returnList=0&sequence=0&thisListPosition=267 and the object may once have marked the entrance to a brothel.
The inscription was dedicated by Terpon, servant of Aphrodite.
Inscription The stone is formed in a phallic shape (23" long, 8" thick, 73 lbs.), with a carved inscription in Ionic Greek reading:
ΤΕΡΠΩΝ ΕΙΜΙ ΘΕΑΣ ΘΕΡΑΠΩΝΣΕΜΝΗΣ ΑΦΡΟΔΙΤΗΣΤΟΙΣ ΔΕ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΗΣΑΣΙ ΚΥΠΡΙΣΧΑΡΙΝ ΑΝΤΑΠΟΔΟΙΗ
In standard Greek orthography the text would read: .
It forms a distich in dactylic hexameter:
Tĕr-pōn— —ei-mĭ thĕ-— U Uās thĕră-— U Upōn sĕm-— —nēs ă-phrŏ-— U Udītēs— — tois dĕ kă-— U U tăs-tē-— —sā-sĭ kŭ-— U Uprīs khărĭn— U Uănt-ă-pŏ-— U U doi-ē— —
The inscription can be roughly translated as: "I am Terpon, servant of noble Aphrodite, may Kypris return grace to those who set up (the stone)."
Catalog references L.H. Jeffery: Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (LSAG), no. 288.03 H. Roehl, Inscriptiones Graecae antiquissimae (IGA), no. 551 H. Roehl, Imagines Inscriptionum Graecarum antiquissimarum, edition 3 pp. 31 no. 52 Carmina Epigraphica Graeca, no. 400.
References