The Etruscans and Lemnos: a century of Italian archaeological research
Study meeting
Fondazione Luigi Rovati - 6 March 2023
Introduction and greetings:
Giovanna Forlanelli - President of Fondazione Luigi Rovati
H.E. Eleni Sourani - Ambassador of Greece in Italy
Gemma Sena Chiesa - Emeritus Professor of Classical Archeology at Università Statale di Milano
Salvatore Settis - Academy of the Lincei
Giulio Paolucci - Curator of Fondazione Luigi Rovati
Giuseppe Sassatelli - National Institute of Etruscan and Italic Studies
Speakers:
Emanuele Papi - Director of the Italian Archaeological School of Athens, Siend University
Carlo De Domenico - Università Statale di Milano, Italian Archaeological School of Athens
Riccardo Di Cesare - University of Foggia, Italian Archaeological School of Athens
Germano Sarcone - Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italian Archaeological School of Athens
The stele of Kaminia
An important testimony enriches the section dedicated to writing on the underground floor of the Art Museum of Fondazione Luigi Rovati: the stele of Kaminia, one of the most enigmatic and debated inscriptions of all classical antiquity, found in Lemnos and now housed in the Archaeological Museum Athens national team.
Found between 1883 and 1885 near the village of Kaminia, on the island of Lemnos, in the northern Aegean Sea, the stele is dated to the 6th century BC. and has aroused particular interest in the two inscriptions it bears engraved. The alphabet of the stele is Greek, of the so-called 'red' (or Greek-Western) type, but some peculiar traits bring it closer to the Etruscan alphabet.
The news of the ancient authors on the Pelasgians or Tyrrhenians, who would have inhabited Lemnos until the conquest of Athens (ca. 500 BC), led the Italian Archaeological School of Athens to conduct excavations and research on the island to identify the origins of the Tyrrhenians of Italy , i.e. the Etruscans.
The stele, the work of a local workshop, is a thin and long slab of limestone originally about two meters high, of which the upper half remains. On the forehead is engraved in very low relief the figure of a warrior in profile, standing, armed with a spear and shield. His face, with a flat head, large eyes and a pronounced smile, refers to the iconography attested in Lemnos, present on vases and other terracotta objects from the Archaic period (7th-6th century BC).
An inscription distributed over 8 lines is engraved around the character: some lines are read from bottom to top, others horizontally from left to right and from right to left in alternating lines. A second inscription, on three lines, incomplete at the bottom, placed vertically on the right side, was drawn up by a different stonecutter.
The reading is controversial: one of the possible interpretations is that the inscription recalls the warrior Aker son of Tavarsa (Aker Tavarsio), to represent the descent from the members of an illustrious family of Lemnos. A second interpretation instead identifies him as a Holaie (Hylaios in Greek) perhaps originally from Phocaea, in Asia Minor. The stele was the marker of a burial.