A newly-found inscribed funerary altar from the territory of Parthicopolis

Abstract

The subject of this communication is a funerary altar discovered in 2022 during archaeological field survey in the Sandanski area. The monument was found at site 58, situated in the locality “Saint Dimitria” near the village of Leshnitsa, municipality of Sandanski. The site is a settlement from the Roman period (2nd–4th c. AD) and the Middle Ages (13th–14th c. AD), occupying a natural, flat floodplain terrace north of the Leshnishka River, covering an area of 5.8 decares. The monument is a funerary altar, possibly exhibiting traces of an unfinished verse-inscription in Greek, dated to the second half of the 2nd c. or the beginning of the 3rd c. AD. The Leshnitsa funerary altar joins the small group of funerary epigraphy from the Middle Strymon region, whence two other examples of the same type from nearby Heraclea Sintica are also dated to the second half of the 2nd c. or the beginning of the 3rd c. AD. The funerary altar from Leshnitsa constitutes the first such example from the territory of Parthicopolis, a Trajanic or early Hadrianic foundation of AD 117–120.

Keywords

• Roman archaeology
• funerary altar
• verse-inscriptions
• Greek epigraphy
• Parthicopolis
• province of Macedonia