1987/01/01 by Merle K. Langdon
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Classical Antiquity Studies #Ancient Egypt and Archaeology #Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies
paper · doi:10.2307/148348
N JULY, 1957, at the place of construction of a ticket booth for the west entrance to the A Agora Excavations from Apostle Paul Street, an inscribed stele (I 6793) was found reused as a manhole cover. Preliminary examination by the Agora staff just after finding led to its classification as a poletai record. The compact grid and small lettering corresponded to several known poletai documents, and some words in the text suggested leases. For the next quarter of a century the inscription remained unnoticed except for one brief mention. I Then in 1975 and again in 1980 I undertook a study of the stone for the purpose of its inclusion in the corpus of poletai inscriptions which I was then preparing for one of the epigraphical volumes of the Agora excavations. I soon determined that the stele was not a poletai record but most likely a tribal decree. Plans to include the inscription in my corpus have accordingly been altered. At the suggestion of Homer Thompson and John Traill I offer instead this separate publication of the document.2