Stone and Ceramic
Inscribing and monumentalizing text onto buildings is a practice well-known throughout the ancient world. In ancient Egypt, such inscriptive architectural decoration were often situated in tombs and temples, specifically in door-shaped niches holding offerings. These false doors served as a symbolic passage between the living and the dead, and they often had highly decorated lintels that included a prayer to the gods or the name and status of the deceased. These texts often come to us as a plethora of fragments, recording ideas about a liminal space between the living and spiritual worlds.
Juxtaposed with these examples of monumentalized language are two intimate objects marked by text. The broken piece of pottery, called an ostrakon, was used as scrap "paper" after the original vessel had been broken. This common practice indicates the excess of functions that an object might have across its multiple "use lives." Although a very different object, the Black-Figure Panathenaic Amphora fragment in Bryn Mawr College's collection is similarly intimate and personal. The fragment includes the partial inscription of the Greek letters ...ΝΕΘΕΝ... The remainder of the inscription on this personal trophy of triumph, won at the Panathnaic games, is lost. These examples of inscriptions and text on various media, both monumental and intimate, demonstrate the pervasive nature of language and text in the ancient world, a trend that continues to the present day.
