A citizen of Sandanski donates a huge fortune to the municipality
Woman from Sandanski with huge donation to town This is how the news would have looked like in the media, had this happened in the present. However, our story took place more than 1800 years ago. The donation is commemorated on a marble slab with an inscription in Ancient Greek, which was discovered near the present-day town of Sandanski. The message is just five sentences long but it poses a pleiad of questions. Some have answers. Others, as it often happens in archaeology, leave us making guesses and kindle our imagination. Have a look at the inscription:
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Donation of Flaviana Philokrateia from Sandanski
Editors: Dimitar Detschew, Georgi Mihailov,Repository: Archaeological Museum - Sandanski,
Preview: Ἀγαθῆι τύχηι. Φλαβιανὴ Φιλοκράτει α εἰς τειμὴν τοῦ τε ἀνδρὸς...,
Type: slab,
Material: marble,
A letter from the underworld
Have you ever thought about what you would like to have written on your tombstone? What message would you like to leave for the next generations? Discussing such matters is not a show of bad taste, and it is not ‘tempting fate’. Come on, guys, it’s the 21st century, isn’t it! We all know how it is going to end for all of us, and yet, we keep kindling our conviction that we are immortal.
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Funerary inscription of the family of Matrona from Nicopolis ad Nestum
Editors: Georgi Mihailov,Repository: Regional History Museum - Blagoevgrad,
Preview: Δέρκεο σῆμα, φέριστε, καὶ εἴρεο τίς κάμε τοῦτο. Ἑρμογένης ποθέων...,
Type: slab,
Material: marble,
The questions of Aelia's Fountain
When I was very young, my mother would take me to all sorts of galleries, museums, ruins, and old monuments. Sometimes she would leave me there without any explanation, and my childish mind would immediately start imagining stories or asking questions. It turns out that I haven't lost this mental reflex to this day. Looking at two old stones can be really fun for me. Not because I'm some kind of expert on old stones, but maybe because I've been good at subversive questioning since I was a child. There was a time when most of my friends loved all kinds of ancient places, but time has shown me how colorful and variegated the world is, and that looking at two protruding marble blocks on some sun-baked hill can be incredibly boring (even painful) for other people, whom I otherwise love just as much. For them, not for the experts on antiquities, I wanted to write down all the questions that pop into my head
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Sarcophagus of Aelia from Nikopol
Editors: Boris Gerov,Repository: -,
Preview: Aeternae securitati vel D(is) M(anibus) et b onae m emoriae..., Floribus ut saltem requiescant membra iucundis Aeliae carae mihi nunc...,
Type: sarcophagus,
Material: limestone,
Together forever
Valentin had spent his first years near the military camp where his father served. But when Emperor Septimius Severus had to march with the troops to the empire’s eternal enemy, Parthia, Diophan decided that it would be dangerous to leave his family at the distant northern border for an unknown length of time while he himself fought at the other end of the inhabited world. And whether he would even return alive? So he sent them to their homeland, to prosperous Augusta Traiana in Thrace, to his cousin, also named Diophan – both proudly bearing their grandfather’s name, one of the first citizens who had settled in the newly founded city and glorified their family.
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Funerary inscription for the family of Valentinus the veteran
Editors: Václav Dobruský, Georges Seure, Georgi Mihailov,Repository: National Archaeological Institute with Museum - BAS,
Preview: Τὸν παλεστρατιώτην τ[ὸ]ν ἐντείμως βιότοιο τέρμα ἑὸν πλήσαντα πάϊς διεδέξατ’...,
Type: statue base,
Material: limestone,
The Unsteady Hand of Fate
A young man left behind an epitaph with universal messages: that life is brief and unpredictable, that happiness is fragile, and that we all belong to the same circle. It is an invitation to live consciously, to learn from the experiences of others as well as from our own, to leave room each day for a moment that reminds us of what it means to be human.
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Greek metric inscription from Mt. Kosmaj
Editors: Slobodan Dušanić, Anne-Marie Vérilhac,Repository: Monastery Tresije,
Preview: Dis Manibus, Ἄξιον ἥγησαί με τὸν ὠκύμορον, παρο δεῖτα, καὶ γνώσῃ τὰ...,
Type: stele,
Material: limestone,