Perception and perceptibility of dedicatory building inscriptions in Hellenistic and early imperial Asia Minor
2025
RFB16
Associated with Research Field B ‘Inscribing Spaces’, the project “Perception and perceptibility of dedicatory building inscriptions in Hellenistic and early imperial Asia Minor” focuses on the epigraphic evidence for the dedication of public buildings in modern Türkiye from the mid-4th cent. BCE to the end of the 1st cent. AD. Ultimately, the project aims for a better understanding of the practice of attaching dedicatory inscriptions on buildings and monuments, their perceptibility in the built environment, and their developments in terms of design and layout.
While being continuously enriched and further stimulated by the meetings and events organized and hosted by the Cluster, the now ending first phase of preparation for an application for multi-year third-party funding was mainly concerned with preliminary samplings of the relevant epigraphic material, the identification of case studies and the constant enhancement and refinement of the catalogue of research questions.
In order to get a profound impression of the quantity and quality of the available epigraphic material, roughly 11.600 inscriptions from twenty cities in different regions of Asia Minor have been preliminary evaluated to date by exploiting the relevant epigraphic corpora and the PHI epigraphic database. The sample sizes obviously strongly diverge depending on the size and importance of the cities and their development over time, the nature of local and regional epigraphic habits, and the state and quality of research and epigraphic publications. Currently, the three smallest samples come from Lebedos (15), Aigai (18) and Euromos (21), while the largest three – Aphrodisias (1500+), Pergamon (1649+) and Ephesos (3808+) – alone make up for about 60 % of the total number of inscriptions so far dealt with.
To get a sense of overall developments even beyond the chronological scope of the intended research project, it seemed reasonable to initially include all identified dedicatory building inscriptions in a provisional catalogue, regardless of their specific nature, their state of preservation, and their chronology. Thus, it can be said, that altogether 511 or 4,1 % of the total of inscriptions could be classified as dedicatory building inscriptions, of which 368 can be sorted out in the process either because they fall out of the project’s chronological frame or due to their fragmentary state of preservation. Out of the remaining 143 inscriptions, about one half must equally be dismissed for the lack of architectural and/or spatial context. Consequently, only 69 inscriptions come generally into question for qualitative evaluation. However, this number further decreases by roughly another half when taking into account that there are many circumstances where inscriptions are clustered in one and the same architectural context and/or even duplicates in some instances. At Perge, for example, 4 out of 6 sufficiently contextualized inscriptions are dedications from one and the same man on door and window lintels of one and the same building. In the end, there are not even two architectural case studies left in average per city. This allows for a confident projection regarding the project’s feasibility in the future.
During the initial stage of the project, a catalogue of research questions was roughly outlined and divided into three categories, namely formal, contextual and content-related questions. If possible, all three of those categories should be applied to a specific case study and its related epigraphic material as well as architectural and spatial context. This may be exemplified by the dedicatory building inscriptions of a certain Quintus Lollius Philetairos and his wife Lollia Antiochis in Assos on the western coast of Asia Minor in the early reign of the Roman emperor Augustus. While Philetairos himself had a portico built in the city’s gymnasium and dedicated it to the emperor, his spouse is attested in two building inscriptions as the founder of a bath building at a different location just south of the city’s agora, dedicated to Augustus’ daughter Julia.
With regards to their content, the altogether three building inscriptions entail a number of intriguing questions on their social and cultural context, regarding e.g. female benefactions in general or the fact that Philetairos and Antiochis, though coming from a native family background, were holding Roman citizenship, and the conclusions one might draw on that grounds on the intended audience of the respective inscriptions and their implications for the usage of the buildings they were attached to. This leads to the inscriptions’ architectural and urban context. Whereas the dedicatory inscription of Philetairos and one of the two inscriptions concerning the dedication of Antiochis were attached to the architraves of the inner courtyards of those two buildings and therefore only visible to the users and visitors of the respective buildings, the other inscription recording Lollia’s benefaction must have been attached to an outer wall of the bath building. Intriguingly, and this relates now to the set of formal questions, the inscription is framed by a so-called tabula ansata. While mobile versions of such tabulae were used early on for or even as votive gifts or for public announcements and they can also be found in the context of funerary inscriptions, its usage for building inscriptions has not been treated in detail so far. One might assume, that all three aspects are evident in building dedications: Votive or gift-giving, public announcement and personal commemoration. It is details as such, that the project wants to analyze and bring together within the scope of a broad geographical, chronological and cultural frame, and that are also enriching the funding application in preparation.
People
Project Lead: Matthias Pichler