Stone of Terpon

The Stone of Terpon or Pebble of Antibes (Galet d'Antibes) is an ancient artifact excavated near the seawall of Antibes, France (the ancient Antipolis) in 1866 ([1]). The stone is held in the Musée d’Histoire et d’Archéologie adjacent to that same seawall in Antibes. The stone's inscription has been dated to between 450 and 425 BC,([2]) and the object may once have marked the entrance to a brothel.

Inscription

The stone is formed in a phallic shape (23" long, 8" thick, 73 lbs.), with a carved inscription in Ionic Greek reading:

ΤΕΡΠΩΝ ΕΙΜΙ ΘΕΑΣ ΘΕΡΑΠΩΝ
ΣΕΜΝΗΣ ΑΦΡΟΔΙΤΗΣ
ΤΟΙΣ ΔΕ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΗΣΑΣΙ ΚΥΠΡΙΣ
ΧΑΡΙΝ ΑΝΤΑΠΟΔΟΙΗ

In standard Greek orthography the text would read:

Τέρπων εἰμὶ θεάς θεράπων σεμνῆς Ἀφροδίτης
Τοῖς δὲ καταστήσασι Κύπρις χάριν ἀνταποδοίη.

It forms a distych in dactylic hexameter:

Tĕr-pōn — —

ei-mĭ thĕ- — U U

ās thĕră- — U U

pōn sĕm- — —

nēs ă-phrŏ- — U U

dītēs — —

tois dĕ kă- — U U

tăs-tē- — —

sā-sĭ kŭ- — U U

prīs khărĭn — U U

ănt-ă-pŏ- — U U

doi-ē — —

The inscription can be roughly translated as: "I am Terpon, servant of noble Aphrodite, may Kypris return grace to those who set up (the stone)."

Catalog references

• L.H. Jeffery: Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (LSAG), no. 288.03
• H. Roehl, Inscriptiones Graecae antiquissimae (IGA), no. 551
• H. Roehl, Imagines Inscriptionum Graecarum antiquissimarum, edition 3 pp. 31 no. 52
• Carmina Epigraphica Graeca, no. 400.