Volume 84, Nº 3 (2024)

The article analyzes the historical context of the inscription of Shalmaneser I from Üçtepe published in 2022. At the end of Adad-nērārī I’s reign (1295–1264) and in the early years of Shalmaneser I (1263–1234), the city of Šināmu, now identified with Üçtepe, was controlled by the kingdom of Hanigalbat, as it is shown by the letter IBoT 1.34 from the Boǧazköy archives. According to IBoT 1.34, a certain ruler of Hanigalbat resided in Šināmu not long before the time when this text was composed. A presence in person of the king of Hanigalbat in Šināmu, a city on the Upper Tigris, far from the major centers of his land in the Habur triangle and in a close proximity to the Hittite border, reflects a tense situation on the eve of the Assyrian attack, when Hanigalbat was balancing between two powerful neighbors. A possible mention of the conquest of Carchemish by Assyria needs to be confronted with the evidence provided by KBo 18.25+ and KBo 18.28+, two other letters from the Boǧazköy archives. This evidence provided by the Üçtepe inscription supports previously advanced hypotheses about a major Hittite-Assyrian military clash during the reign of Shalmaneser I.

The article discusses the mention in the Iliad (Hom. Il . II. 505) of the ‘well-built’ city of Hypothebai (Ὑποθῆβαι), the identification of which continues to be a subject of discussion among the researchers: historians, philologists, archaeologists, paleotopographers – classicists of all kinds. The understanding of the beginning of the formation of Theban polis, the time of the creation of an organized settlement in Thebes in the eighth century BC depends on the interpretation of this literary evidence. Based on a complex approach, using both literary evidence and linguistic analysis of the text, as well as the latest archaeological and the paleotopographic data regarding Thebes, from the twelfth to the eighth century BC, the article presents an interpretation according to which the Iliad’s Hypothebai is a unique hapax introduced into the poem and reflecting the creation of a new, in relation to the Mycenaean Kadmeia (Thebes), organized settlement. These new Thebes included both the acropolis of Thebes (the Kadmeia), and the new sectors of Greater Thebes beneath the Kadmeia, which was typical for the time of the creation of early Greek poleis in the eighth century BC. It is also not impossible that, in addition to this, the insertion to the text of the Iliad of Hypothebai emphasizes that the population of Potniai, situated around two kilometers from Kadmeia, also belonged to the territory controlled by the early Theban polis.

The paper investigates how the Romans imagined human soul in the Republican and early Imperial times. It is based on the comparative historical study of Ennius’ poetical narrative compared to the works of antiquarian poets Virgil and Ovid. The second important source shedding light on the fragmentary evidence includes material of comparative religious studies. Relying on the diachronic analysis the author argues that initially the Romans ascribed to any human being multiple souls. After the funeral one of them was believed to remain in the grave with the earthly remains. The other one moved on to the Afterlife and was deified as di manes. Obviously, the Romans distinguished other kinds of souls as well, but their nature and number are not completely clear due to the lack of sources dating to the pre-Republican period.

The article covers the problem of sources of the so-called Syriac Julian Romance. It deals with a few previously overlooked testimonies which suggest that at least some of the information presented in the Romance is derived from a work written by a well-informed author of the fourth century, who was probably a contemporary and eyewitness of the reign of Julian and a veteran of the Persian campaign of 363.

This paper introduces three previously unpublished grave inscriptions from Tenedos, two of which belong to the Hellenistic period. Recent surveys on the island led to the discovery of inscriptions no. 2 and 3, while inscription no. 1 was found during rescue excavations carried out in 2002. It is worth noting that inscription no. 1 is a cenotaph of a foreigner from Byzantion, which sets it apart from the other two. Based on its stylistic features, the stele with the inscription no. 2 ought to be of Mysian origin. Furthermore, two of the inscriptions (1 and 2) are of particular interest for featuring traits of the Lesbian dialect.

The paper presents the publication (mainly for the first time) of 12 terracotta objects, with the so-called ‘erotic’ or ‘phallic’ depictions. These are grotesque attendants of phallophori, and a pygmy attacked by a cockerel, fragments of Greek vessels with erotic scenes, the statuettes of phalli, and two unique plaques with the depiction of symplegma. Thematically and functionally close to these items are pottery oil lamps in the shape of a man with an enormous phalli. Moreover, as a precursor to the Graeco-Roman terracotta there is a complex of faience and limestone ‘phallic’ figurines from the Late and Graeco-Roman periods (including so called Naukratic figures ). The origins of such phallic statuettes, as shown in the paper, can be traced back to the Late Egyptian tradition and even earlier. The ‘erotic’ depictions were widespread in different regions of Egypt. This paper makes one of the first steps in the research into the previously ‘obscene’ or ‘prohibited’/’restricted’ theme of Ancient Egyptian erotic depictions from the collection of the Pushkin Museum. To understand these objects as a specific phenomenon of Egyptian culture, one is looking for their provenance, which, as is often the case, is missing. We can only speculate about the initial context of such items, being in greater part the ‘ex-votos’ or apotropaic objects kept in houses and serving as amulets for male potency and female fertility.