Inscribed decree honouring maidens who worked on the robe (peplos) for Athena
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
108 BC - 107 BC
Materials
White marble
Measurements
70 x 488 mm
Place of origin
Athens
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 486389
Summary
Marble slab bearing two inscribed decrees of the Athenian Council and Assembly of 108/7BC. Now fitted into a frame within a pedestal of a statue of the Hellenistic period.
Full description
This marble slab bears an inscription recording a decree of the Athenian Council and Assembly of 108/7 BC. The decree grants honours to the maidens who worked on the robe (peplos) for the statue of Athena. It is one of three similar inscriptions which date to around the same decade and seem to reflect a revival or reform of the arrangements for making the peplos, which was carried in procession and presented to the goddess at the Panathenaia festival. The names of the maidens are listed in a ‘roll of honour’ at the bottom of the inscription. This and the lists of maidens in the other two inscriptions supply us with much of our information on the female members of elite Athenian families at this period. It is not known precisely when or how the inscription came to Petworth: it is possible that it was acquired by Charles Wyndham, 2nd Earl of Egremont (1710–63), but it may have been obtained at a later point during the era of competitive collecting. By 1865 the inscription had been built into the modern base of, fittingly, a Hellenistic statue of Artemis. This slab appears, built into its modern base, in a watercolour of the central aisle of the sculpture gallery at Petworth by Madeline Wyndham, ca. 1865. See NT 485159. Another small fragment of the same inscription is in the Epigraphical Museum, Athens: EM 7787. For full transcription of the lengthy inscription see: https://www.atticinscriptions.com/inscription/AIUK1/1 (Peter Liddel, October 2021)
Provenance
Acquired in Athens before 1865, perhaps in the 1820s, thence by descent, until the death in 1952 of the 3rd Lord Leconfield, who had given Petworth to the National Trust in 1947, and whose nephew and heir, John Wyndham, 6th Lord Leconfield and 1st Lord Egremont (1920-72) arranged for the acceptance of the major portion of the collections at Petworth in lieu of death duties (the first ever such arrangement) in 1956 by H.M.Treasury.
Credit line
Petworth House, The Egremont Collection, National Trust Collections
Marks and inscriptions
85 (painted right hand front bottom of slab)
References
Aleshire and Lambert 2003: S. B. Aleshire and S. D. Lambert, ‘Making the Peplos for Athena: a New Edition of IG II2 1060 + IG II2 1036”, Zeitschrift fuer Papyrologie und Epigrafik 142, 2003, 65-86. Lambert 2018: S.D. Lambert, Attic Inscriptions in UK Collections. Volume 1. Petworth House (2018). Online publication: https://www.atticinscriptions.com/papers/aiuk/-1/ Liddel & Low 2021: Peter Liddel & Polly Low 'Ancient Athenian Inscriptions at Petworth House, Lyme and Mount Stewart', National Trust Art, Buildings and Collections Bulletin, Autumn 2021, pp. 22-6 Raeder 2000: Joachim Raeder, Die antiken Skulpturen in Petworth House (West Sussex), Monumenta Artis Romanae 28, Mainz, 2000, no. 91.