A

3.

Bowl Silver Cypriot The Inscription

Reconsidered

GUNTER NEUMANN
University of Wiirzburg

HE SILVER or phiale (MMA74.51.4557; BOWL Figures 1, 4), the primary object of concern

syllabiques,as no. 179, and venInscriptions chypriotes

in this survey, is probably from Kourion, within the broader region of Paphos. It was dated by Einar Gjerstadto the beginning of the sixth century B.C.(see, however, the comments on this score by VassosKarageorghis,above).' Thanks to the restoration undertaken by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, we now have the opportunity to try for a better reading of the bowl's inscriptions. In spite of this, however, we must assume that some essential elements in a number of signs have been lost forever as a result of corrosion.
THE LEGEND ABOVE THE RECUMBENT

tured for the first three signs the reading ape-ro (with a question mark at the a).3 He did not attempt a transliteration from sign 4 on. Terence Mitford read the whole as kupo-ro-ta-le-u (Kvrpo0&XEV[;]), and he was certainly correct with regard to signs 1 through 3.4 His reading of sign 6 also appears to be accurate, though his suggested transliterationsfor signs 4 and 5 are unconvincing, which is, I believe, equally the case with his grammaticalinterpretation of the entire name (as the genitive singular masculine of a proper name Kmrpo-0&ATXq). While Masson this as "tres in the seduisante," accepts 1983 edition
of his Inscriptions chypriotes syllabiques,Markus Eget-

QUEEN

The inscription reads from left to right (see Figure 1). Unquestionably, it refers to the female figure (on the left) beneath it, lying on a klineor couch and looking at her partner at the right. (KXCv'q) Thus, one may logically expect a feminine proper name in the nominative, or possibly a title. The number of syllabic signs cannot be precisely determined, and it would be possible to come up with between six and eight, depending on how one arranged the strokes. My own preference is for seven as will be explained further on. The engraver started the legend far to the left. The first sign in the group stands above the double flute of the leading female musician. The signs are clearly separated by intervening spaces. Of the previous readings, that of Otto Hoffmann must be almost completely rejected; (ipe-ropo-ta-ko) we may retain only his reading of the third sign, ro.2 Olivier Masson included this inscription in his ? The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1999
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 34

meyer rightly expresses reservations.5 Let us now consider these signs, one at a time. Sign i: ku. Its form, now visible again thanks to the Metropolitan's restoration, corresponds precisely to that in the Early Paphian grid, in Inscripvertical strokes at the very top.6 Sign 2: The po was engraved in two curving strokes. Sign 3: ro.This sign-and what remains of those that follow-is considerably smaller than the first two. At the top, it is on a line with the preceding characters,but it does not extend as far downward. Like the preceding character, it was also written with two strokes. The stroke extending from the upper right to the lower left accidentally became too long. (Perhaps the engraver merely slipped here; the bottom part of the stroke is considerably thinner. Both downwardstrokes should be the same length.) As Mitford proposed, this gives us ku-po-ro-, or Kvrpo-, the first element of a proper name. It refers to the island, and it is certain that such a name would have been given only to members of the landowning aristocracy. (Of the syllabary inscriptions, see, for example, the masculine Kvrp6-(pLtXo
[Inscriptions chypriotessyllabiques, no. 158]; KvrrpOtions chypriotes syllabiques(p. 66), with the two small

The notes for part 3 begin on page 35. Figures 1-3 appear in part 1 of this article, Figures
4-15 in part 2.

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[Inscriptions chypriotes syllabiques, pp. 15f.]; Kvtrp6-TLRuos [Inscriptions chypriotessyllabiques, no. etc. It is rarer to 205]; the feminine Kvrrpo-TCpLcx, find -Krrpo- as the second element, as in the repeatedly attested FDLX6-Kv1rpos.) These first three signs are well preserved; those that follow, however, are difficult to reconcile with the normal forms of the Paphian grid. Their vertical strokes are all slanted slightly to the left. Sign 4: Its form does not fully correspond to any registered in the Paphian grid. The interpretation as ta, or -, which was first suggested by Mitford, would presuppose that the sign's vertical hasta continued upward beyond the intersection of the two strokes. Yet there is no trace of this that one can see. Moreover, one must remember that the upper ends of the preceding signs all seem to lie along the same imaginary horizontal line. The horizontal stroke has been extended a bit to the left. Now let me anticipate here, briefly, my conclusion regarding the queen's inscription. I am inclined, by my overall sense of what this proper name might be, to conclude that sign 4 could be the syllable me. My reasons will become clear in a moment. Suffice it to say that-at the least-the remaining fragments of the sign do not exclude this possibility. In Inscriptions chypriotessyllabiques, no. 8-an inscription in the Late Paphian syllabary -the sign me takes the forms Qf,1'. There, the right angle is present in just the manner we see on our bowl, and this is probably the case, as well, for the small stroke pointing off from it to the left. To be sure, one would also have to assume the loss of the vertical hasta to the left. For the time being, however, we will treat this sign as an unknown quantity. Sign 5: It is possible, in sign 5, that there were, in fact, two diagonal strokes branching downward and to the right from the vertical hasta; the upper one is clear, and a tiny remainder of the lower one is still visible next to the vertical hasta. If so, the sign would bear a similarity to the Early Paphian to T. This is closed off at the top by a horizontal stroke, which survives on the left and right. Sign 6: As Mitford proposed, this must be considered a u. It corresponds precisely to its specific Paphian form: A .7 Sign 7: I take the two surviving small strokes at the top between the u and the woman's head to be what is left of a seventh sign, otherwise lost. The left stroke is clearly slanted to the right, so one could is, of course, hypothetical-that imagine-this

OEj,LS

these are the remains of the sign sa, which takes the form of an acute angle, open at the top: v . Altogether, then, this would give us: ku-po-ro-[x]-t-u-sa I would like to propose-with one addition, the me mentioned just above-a transliteration for this as follows:
KvTrpoJle8owvc

This would be a suitably expressive name for a queen: "she who holds sway, reigns over Cyprus." The masculine pendant KvTppoe.8Sov is documented in Inscriptions chypriotes no. 142.1 (in the syllabiques, dative ku-po-ro-me-to-[ti]). The verb pe8&o frequently has the name of a country as its genitive object.8 We have not yet had an active feminine present participle in the corpus of Cypriot inscriptions. Presumably, one must interpret its diphthong -ouin much the same way as the -au- in ki-yo-na-u-se (KLy6ovrt [accusative plural]) in a number of Paphian inscriptions. (There, the nasal of the case ending -ans has been vocalized.)

THE KING

LEGEND

ABOVE

THE

FIGURE

OF THE

Mitford emphatically stated that this inscription (Figure i, on the right, above the king) was "clearly not syllabic"-that we are faced, here, with an alphabetic script.9 Moreover, other researchers have not incorporated these signs into the Cypriot syllabic material. Yet it seems improbable that different types of scripts would have been used for two figures that are so definitely related to each other. On the assumption that they are in the same syllabic script, let us take a look. Here, too, the legend most likely consists of a proper name or a title, this time a masculine noun. Again, one must assume a reading from left to right. What we see here are probably the remains of four signs. I make no assertions about the first two. It does seem possible, however, to read sign 3 as the remnant of a le, and sign 4 as a surviving fragment of a Paphian se. This would give us [x-] [x-] lese, producing the nominative ending -s that one would expect. Naturally, all this is highly uncertain. Let me only suggest, and very tentatively, that what might have been inscribed here-appropriately
enough-was pa-si-le-se (POcLrXEts) or "king." (This

is the dialectical form for 3patLXErE6.)

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NOTES 1. Einar Gjerstad, "Decorated Metal Bowls from Cyprus," Opuscula 4 (1946), pp. 3ff. Archaeologica 2. Otto Hoffmann, Die griechischenDialekte in ihrem historischen Zusammenhange,vol. 1, Der siid-achiische Dialekt (G6ttingen, 1891), p. 61, no. 116. Olivier Etudes chyMasson, Les Inscriptionschypriotes 3. syllabiques, priotes, 1 (Paris, 1961); rev. and augmented repr. (Paris, 1983). 4. Terence B. Mitford, The Inscriptionsof Kourion,Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, 83 (Philadelphia, 1971), pp. 11ff., no. 2. 5. Masson, Inscriptionschypriotes syllabiques,1983, p. 398; Markus Egetmeyer, Wirterbuchzu den Inschriftenim kyprischenSyllabar 6.

7.

8.

9.

einerArbeitvon AlmutHintze),Kadmos Sup(unterBeriicksichtigung plement, 3 (Berlin and New York, 1992), p. 72. A earlier reading of an i instead of ku is precisely what occurred in the case of Inscriptionschypriotes no. 283; see Gfinsyllabiques, ter Neumann, "Beitrage zum Kyprischen XII," Kadmos 29 (1990), pp. 163ff. There, we now have the masculine proper name KrrpotpatvTrXos. In other local grids it has the value ko. However, I do not think that should be seen as a factor, even though O. Hoffmann thought otherwise. See, for example, Alcaeus Z 31 (E. Lobel and D. Page, eds., Poetarum Lesbiorum rev. ed. [Oxford, i963], p. 273, no. Fragmenta, 6 Tras KV6iLKOtS p.6ELS (present active participle). 354): 'ACXXiAvs Mitford, Inscriptions of Kourion,p. 12.

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