Thursday Lecture: Ignasi-Xavier Adiego Lajara

Carian Epigraphy: Typology of Texts and Their Interpretation

Professor Dr Ignasi-Xavier Adiego Lajara (Universitat de Barcelona)

Unlike other local languages of ancient Anatolia—such as Phrygian, Lycian, Lydian, Sidetic, or Pisidian—Carian epigraphy presents a remarkable typological, geographical, and graphic diversity. The corpus includes funerary stelae, graffiti, public inscriptions, votive texts, and ostraka. These documents originate not only from Caria itself but also, and, more abundantly, from Egypt, as well as from mainland Greece and Lydia. The variety of Carian alphabets is equally striking, contributing to the overall heterogeneity of the material. The decipherment of the Carian script—achieved in the 1990s, with some significant refinements in recent years—together with ongoing progress in the understanding of the language (despite the fact that many texts remain opaque), now allows for a deeper engagement with the corpus. In this lecture, I will provide an overview of current research through an exploration of the different textual categories, highlighting the diverse functions of the Carian writing system.