Dipylon inscription

Text

The text is written in an archaic form of the Greek alphabet, with some letter shapes still resembling those of the original Phoenician alphabet. For example, the Greek letter zeta (Ζ) resembles the Phoenician letter zayin (I). The text is written from right to left, with the individual letters mirror-shaped in comparison with the modern forms. It is placed in a circle around the shoulder of the vessel. The text consists of 46 characters, of which the first 35 can easily be read as a hexametric verse in Greek. The fragmentary rest is believed to have been the beginning of the second verse of a distichon , but the exact interpretation is unclear. B. Powell has argued that the final characters may represent a garbled snippet from the middle of an abecedarium (ΚΛΜΝ) by a second hand, someone learning to write. More recently, N. M. Binek has shown that the last six markings can "be viewed not as letters or as attempts to inscribe letters, but rather as decorative elements fashioned by a second inscriber in accordance with the principles of Geometric idiom", inasmuch as the segment roughly mirrors the shapes of letters 9-4 (ΧΡΟΝΥΝ). The text marks the vessel as a prize in a dancing competition. It is translated as: "whoever of the dancers now dances most lightly ...", and the second line is conjectured to have said something to the effect of "... he shall get this (vessel as his prize)".

The text of the inscription runs:

ΗΟΣΝΥΝΟΡΧΕΣΤΟΝΠΑΝΤΟΝΑΤΑΛΟΤΑΤΑΠΑΙΖΕΙΤΟΤΟΔΕΚΛ[?]ΜΙ[?]Ν

In modern scholarly editions, this is sometimes transcribed as:

ὸς νῦν ὀρχεστôν πάντον ἀταλότατα παίζει,
τô τόδε κλμιν[...]

This corresponds to the following in the later classical orthography in Greek (using the Ionian form of the Greek alphabet), with the metric feet of the hexameter indicated:

ὃς νῦν | ὀρχη|στῶν πάν|των ἀτα|λώτατα | παίζει
τοῦ τόδε ...

Literal translation:

Whoever of all these dancers now plays most delicately,

of him this (sc. pot)...