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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2011
A small gem in the possession of Mr. Henri Seyrig, Director of the French Archaeological Institute in Beyrouth, may be briefly described as follows:
Obverse. Inscription in five lines, μέγα τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ κυρίου Σάραπις. Crescent moon under the last line.
Reverse. Inscription in six and a half lines,μεγάλη τύχη τῆς ἀνικήτον νεωτέρας. Star after the last letter.
Brown and dark green jasper. Upright oval, 18 × 13 mm.
The obverse inscription, without κυρίου, encircles a bust a Sarapis engraved on a jasper in the British Museum; see British Museum Quarterly, 11, 33-34. Several more examples, all omitting κυρίου, are cited by Peterson (Heis Theos, 208 f.). Almost all of them treat the name Σάραπις as indeclinable. Evidently the sentence is a common acclamation, which requires no further comment.
The inscription on the reverse, which has not been found elsewhere in just this form, needs closer examination.
1 The inscription which gave the occasion for these remarks was brought to the attention of Mr. Bonner by a letter from Mr. Seyrig, into whose hands the stone had recently come, and to whom we are indebted for his generous permission to publish it. In preparing to do so, Mr. Bonner found that the data needed for the interpretation of the text had been gathered by Mr. Nock in the course of other investigations (JHS 45 [1925], 94, n. 84; 48, 36–37), and therefore prevailed upon Mr. Nock to join him in signing this note.
2 Preisigke, Wörterbuch der griechischen Papyri, s.v. τύχη, C; Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. τύχη, IV, 1.
3 The fact that Isis is called νέα in an uncertain locality, perhaps Patmos (P. Oxy. 1380, 85), is of little weight. The epithets of Hera at Stymphalos (παῖς, τɛλɛἰα, χήρα, Paus. 8. 22.2) have no bearing upon the present question. They refer to the different stages of woman's life, over which Hera presided; or to put it in another way, they represent the age-groups of her worshippers.
Several years ago Professor Kirsopp Lake gave Mr. Bonner a memorandum of a painted inscription found at Samaria along with a statue of Kore. It reads as follows: ɛἴς θɛὸς ὀ πάντων δɛσπότης, πɛγάλη Kόρη ἡ ἀνɛίκητος. The text is subject to correction, since the final publication has not appeared, and no copy of the preliminary report is accessible to us. It is noteworthy that although the form of the acclamation in honor of Kore is like that on the reverse of Mr. Seyrig's amulet, the goddess is not called νɛωτέρα.
4 A. Erman, Religion der Ägypter, 390.
5 In his comment on 4716c Franz held that the “younger goddess” of l.18 was Plotina, wife of Trajan, believing that a small temple was dedicated to her in the neighborhood of the great temple of Hathor-Aphrodite. No evidence has been found to confirm this opinion.
6 Svoronos, Nομίσνατα τῶν Πτολɛμαίων, I, 314, No. 1887; 316, No. 1897. Cf. now J. L. Tondriau, Bull. Soc. roy. arch. Alex. 37 [1948], 20f.
