This is a call for papers for Parallel Panel 23 at the International Epigraphic Congress (CIEGL). Parallel sessions are intended to collect 20-minute presentations. Proposals may be submitted according to the procedure and template outlined in the CFP to: ciegl2027@unibo.it. Interested parties can contact Dr. Anna Sitz at anna-marie.sitz@uni-tuebingen.de for more information on how to submit an abstract.
Panel 23: Epigraphic Reuse: Appropriation, Erasure, and Reinscription in Secondary Contexts
Chairs: Polly Low, Anna M. Sitz
Ancient city-states and individuals often intended the inscriptions they put up to remain untouched and in place for the distant future, but in reality many inscribed texts were reused – and also modified – already in antiquity. The proposed session explores inscriptions that were recycled, not merely as spoliated building blocks, but for later epigraphic uses: e.g., inscribed bases with secondary honorific texts for new honorees (Moser 2017, 2023), dedications erased due to damnatio memoriae (Lefebvre 2004), civic decrees partially removed in line with political changes (Low 2020), dedications to pagan gods creatively modified during the period of Christianization (Sitz 2023), etc. Rather than being simply a ‘cheap’ way to produce new inscriptions (urban prefects in late antique Rome were more likely to reuse statue bases than lesser oTcials: Machado 2017), the decision to reuse, reinscribe, or selectively erase a pre-existing inscription was bound up with issues of memory, appropriation, and engagement with the past.
This session brings together papers on epigraphic reuse in diterent time periods, potentially dealing with material from the Archaic period through Late Antiquity, in Latin, Greek, or other ancient languages. Although the phenomenon of reusing and modifying inscriptions was well known to ancient viewers (cf. Dio Chrysostom’s complaints about metagraphe, the reinscribing of statue bases), the study of reuse continues to provide fresh insights on the following larger topics:
- The epigraphic habit: not only the production of new inscriptions, but also reuse, modification, and erasure were a part of the epigraphic habit and contributed to epigraphic landscapes in cities, sanctuaries, and necropoleis. Rather than being of secondary importance in comparison with studying the original text on the stone, such later erasures and modifications are critical evidence for the roles that inscriptions played in ancient communities.
- The mnemotic role of inscriptions: the addition of a new text to an older inscribed stone was not a neutral decision but made certain claims about the past (and the present). Likewise, rasurae did much more than simply remove information or ‘erase’ memory. Instead, they invite the viewer to reflect on the purpose and process of erasure. We may even speak of creatio memoriae instead of damnatio memoriae (Omissi 2016).
- The makers and viewers of inscriptions: who was able to appropriate inscriptions for their own later use? How sophisticated was their engagement with the original text? Who were the intended viewers? And what does this tell us about epigraphic literacy in various periods?
- The making of scholarly editions: the modification of an inscribed stone sometimes centuries after its original carving can challenge some of our habits of publishing inscriptions, such as the dividing up of texts by time period (Sitz Forthcoming); for example, the visual and verbal echoing of an earlier inscription in a text from centuries later is diTcult to capture in a corpus (cf. Moser 2023, 2026). The application of interdisciplinary approaches, particularly from archaeology, can aid in considering inscribed monuments more holistically across their full ‘life spans’.
As a whole, then, the papers in this session challenge us to think about inscribed texts in new ways, as dynamic and evolving rather than static. We envision the publication of select papers from the session in a volume to be co-edited with Prof. Muriel Moser-Gerber.
References
Lefebvre, S. 2004. “Les cités face à la damnatio memoriae: les martelages dans l’espace urbain”. Cahiers du Centre Gustave Glotz 15: 191-217.
Low, P. 2020. “Remembering, Forgetting, and Rewriting the Past: Athenian Inscriptions and Collective Memory”. Histos 11: 235-268.
Machado, C. 2017. “Dedicated to Eternity? The Reuse of Statue Bases in Late Antique Italy”, in K. Bolle, C. Machado, C. Witschel (eds), Epigraphic Cultures of Late Antiquity, Stuttgart, 323-357.
Moser, M. 2017. “Reused Statues for Roman Friends: The Past as a Political Resource in Roman Athens”, in T.M. Dijkstra, I.N.I. Kuin, M. Moser, D. Weidgenannt (eds), Strategies of Remembering in Greece under Rome (100 BC – 100 AD), Leiden, 169-181.
Moser, M. 2023. “Augustan Cultural Memories in Roman Athens”, in M. Dinter, C. Guérin (eds), Cultural Memory in Republican and Augustan Rome, Cambridge, 375-393.
Moser, M. 2026 (Forthcoming). “Reuse of Inscriptions and Epigraphic Archaism in Roman Athens”. Journal of Epigraphic Studies 9.
Omissi, A. 2016. “Damnatio Memoriae or Creatio Memoriae? Memory Sanctions as Creative Processes in the Fourth Century AD”. Cambridge Classical Journal 62: 170-199.
Sitz, A.M. 2023. Pagan Inscriptions, Christian Viewers: The Afterlives of Temples and Their Texts in the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean. Oxford.
Sitz, A.M. Forthcoming. “The Grammar of Erasure: Some Reflections on Rasurae in Late Roman Asia Minor”. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik.