In Which Caroline's Reputation as a Classics Nerd Is Forever Cemented

We went to the Epigraphical museum, a place which has been recommended to me multiple times now and actually does measure up to all the hype.

...if you're a nerdy classics major, that is.

The Epigraphy museum is a fabulous place. It's right next to the National Archaeological museum, and I don't think they get many visitors. First, they try to kick you out- they explain, in very earnest Greek, that you've wandered down the wrong street and that this is not the big museum. That is when you have to smile and explain that yes, this is the epigraphical museum, you know this. Then they have to turn on the lights, and send off one of their minions to follow you around. But it's so cool! This is a part of one of the Athenian tribute lists. You can make out the names of the different poleis! The tribute lists. As you can see, they are quite large and quite fragmentary. They also are fun, because with limited work you can read the names out loud and it's kind of fun.

At this point, the guard was still following our every step. I think she was worried that we were going to attempt some sort of mischief with the inscriptions.

And then we found this inscription. If you can make out the words, you may notice that every other line runs backwards- this is an example of boustrophedon. It's a fancy word meaning that one line runs from left to right, and the next runs from right to left. What we found really interesting was the fact that in this inscription, there were no etas or omegas- in words like "aner" or "on" the long vowel was written with the short vowel. This was also the case with the next inscription over which was from about the same time, 55o BC. Why is this? We don't know. We're also very curious. If you know anything, please contact me.

Also, this is the point where I got out my dictionary, and the guard actually got bored and left. I think she figured that Chris, Josh and I weren't actually out to hurt the inscriptions- just to be painfully nerdy.

This is the oldest inscription from the acropolis- it's from the eighth century, and for us at least it was completely illegible.
And, in this case, the plaque was of no help, even though it transcribed the letters. Basically, I can tell that it's boustrophedon, and that there are some alphas, kappas, and maybe some epsilons. Helpful.