Un fondo di hydria ritagliato e iscritto da Mozia: convivenza di alfabeti e lingue diverse

Abstract

During the XLII season (2022) of excavations in Zone D at Motya, Sounding IV, under the floor levels of the “House of Triton’s Horn”, reached a pit filled up with archaic ceramic fragments in which a cut-out bottom of a Greek hydria was found inscribed on both sides with different scripts and languages.

The finding spot, the associated ceramics and a careful ceramologic and epigraphic examination of the fragment allowed to hypothesize that it belonged to one of the merchants who used to live in that residential part of Motya towards the end of 7^th and the beginning of the 6^th century BC. Other finds from the same stratigraphic context, including an Etruscan wine amphora, some fragments of bucchero and the Etruscan inscription found in 2017^[1], show the international connections of the local trade élite, suggesting for a certain while a specific Tyrrhenian vocation.

^[1]     Nigro 2018, 261, 263, figg. 12-13.