Evidence ID
E01239
Type of Evidence
Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)
Archaeological and architectural - Cult buildings (churches, mausolea)
+ Κύριε, βοήθι τῷ δ(ού)λῳ
Ἀνατολίῳ τῷ κτί-
σαντι τὸν ἅγιον
Ἰωάννην. ἀμήν
'+ Lord, help (your) servant Anatolios, who built (the church of) Saint John! Amen.'
Text: Segre 1938, 35-36.
Cult PlacesPrayer/supplication/invocation
Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Cult building - independent (church)
Non Liturgical ActivityPrayer/supplication/invocation
Construction of cult buildings
Bequests, donations, gifts and offerings
Renovation and embellishment of cult buildings
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesOther lay individuals/ people
Source
The inscription (W. 1.10 m; L. 0.49 m; letter height 0.07 m) was found by Mario Segre in the autumn of 1937, during excavations in the narthex of a ruined late antique basilica at Melitzaka in the area of Mirties/Panormos. The mosaic is decorated with geometrical patterns.The mosaic was edited within the frame of a larger project, as Segre had been asked by a governor of the Aegean Islands, to edit a corpus of inscriptions from the Cyclades. He started the work in Kalymnos, as he knew the island from his earlier surveys. The first results were published in 1938, but Segre's work was interrupted by World War II and his premature death in Auschwitz in 1944. After the war Segre's manuscript of the corpus of inscriptions from Kalymnos, together with our mosaic, was revised and edited as a special issue of Annuario della Scuola archeologica di Atene e delle missioni italiane in Oriente by Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli in 1952.
Discussion
The inscription contains an invocation of God as the Lord/Κύριος by a certain Anatolios, described as the founder of a church dedicated to John (unspecified). It is not explicitly stated that the church, where the inscription was found, is meant here, but the form of the inscription, the mosaic floor in the narthex, makes this highly probable. As a modern church, dedicated to St. John (again unspecified), was constructed over the southern aisle of the ancient sanctuary, Segre plausibly argued for the continuity of cult of the saint at the site.For other inscriptions, with similar formulas referring to the foundation of the place of cult of a saint as the primary identity marker of a person, see: E00710, E00902, E01026.
Bibliography
Edition:Segre, Mario, "Tituli Calymnii", Annuario della Scuola archeologica di Atene e delle missioni italiane in Oriente 22-23, N.S. 6-7, (1944-1945 [1952]), no. 230.
Segre, M., "Relazione preliminare sulla prima campagna di scavo nell'isola di Calino agosto-novembre 1937", Memorie pubblicate a cura dell'Istituto storico-archeologico F.E.R.T. e della r. deputazione di storia patria per Rodi 3 (1938), 35-36.
Further reading:
Halkin, F., "L'Egypte, Chypre, la Crète et les autres îles grecques. La Grèce continentale et les pays balkaniques. L'Italie et la Sycylie", Analecta Bollandiana 70 (1952), 121.
Kiourtzian, G., "Pietas insulariorum", [in:] Eupsychia: mélanges offerts à Hélène Ahrweiler, vol. 2 (Série Byzantina Sorbonensia 16, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1998), 376.
Reference works:
Bulletin épigraphique (1939), 280.
Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 12, 386.
Images
)
Segre 1944-1945 [1952], plate CXXI.
)
Other mosaics from the church. After: Segre 1938, pate XXXII.
)
Other mosaics from the church. After: Segre 1938, pate XXXII.
)
Other mosaics from the church. After: Segre 1938, pate XXXII.
Record Created By
Paweł Nowakowski
Date of Entry
04/04/2016
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00020 | John the Baptist | Ἰωάννης | Uncertain | S00042 | John, the Apostle and Evangelist | Ἰωάννης | Uncertain |
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Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
Paweł Nowakowski, Cult of Saints, E01239 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E01239