Nestor's Cup (Pithekoussai)

Nestor's Cup is an eighth century BC wine cup discovered in 1954 in the San Montano cemetery associated with the ancient trading site of Pithekoussai in Magna Graecia, on Ischia, an island in the Gulf of Naples (Italy). The cup has a three-line inscription, one of the earliest surviving examples of writing in the Greek alphabet. It is currently held by the Museo Archeologico di Pithecusae on Ischia.

The cup was originally made in the eastern Aegean, either on the island of Rhodes or in northern Ionia. The inscription was scratched into it after its manufacture, possibly during a communal drinking event known as a symposium. It was found by Georgio Buchner in 1954 in a cremation grave dating to the end of the eighth century, which contained the remains of three adults as well as burnt animal bones, a fibula and fragments of other vessels.

The interpretation of the cup's inscription is controversial, particularly as concerns the reconstruction of a lacuna in its first line. At least fifteen possible reconstructions have been proposed, which variously associate and contrast the vessel with the legendary cup of Nestor described in the Iliad. The Pithekoussai cup has been taken as early evidence for the symposium in the Greek world.

Cup
The cup is a skyphos or kotyle decorated in the Geometric style, 10.3 cm in height and with a diameter of 15.1 cm. It was made around or before approximately 735–720 BC, either on the island of Rhodes or in northern Ionia. It was found in 1954 in a cremation grave dating to approximately 720–710 BC on the island of Ischia, home of the Euboean Greek (trading-site) of Pithekoussai.

The cup's decoration has been called "typical, conventional, and predictable" by Nathan Arrington. It consists of two panels, the uppermost of which is divided into four metopes decorated with diamonds, a stylised drawing of a sacred tree and meander hooks, a device common on Attic skyphoi of the Geometric period. The lower panel includes a zigzag decoration, but also blank spaces, one of which was used for the inscription.

The San Montano cemetery in which the cup was found has been described as sub-elite. Osteological analysis carried out on the bones in 2017 suggested that the cremated remains associated with Nestor's Cup, and the grave itself, were of a child aged around 10 to 14. However, a more recent analysis conducted by the bioarchaeologist Melania Gigante and her team suggests that the remains are actually of three adults of varying ages. Unlike previous studies, they also found evidence of burnt animal bones among the remains, including those of sheep or goats, possibly dogs, and birds. Along with the cup, the tomb contained fragments of 25 other vessels, some associated with wine-drinking, as well as a silver fibula. The bodies were cremated on a pyre separate from the grave, and the grave goods were ritually broken and burnt on the same pyre.

The cup was excavated in 1954 by Giorgio Buchner, who gave the designation "Tomb 168" to the grave from which it originates. The vessel is currently displayed in the Museo Archeologico di Pithecusae in the Villa Arbusto on Ischia.

Inscription


A three-line inscription, scratched onto the side of the cup, is one of the earliest extant Greek inscriptions. The inscription was added to the cup after its manufacture, and dates to the late eighth century. The inscription is in the Chalcidian variant of the Euboean form of the Greek alphabet, in small, neat letters. All three lines are written from right to left – according to Meiggs and Lewis, "virtually unique in a Greek text". The symbol ":" is used as punctuation. Arrington has suggested that the inscription may have been composed orally between multiple participants, each contributing a line, and then written onto the cup.

The second and third lines are in dactylic hexameter. The form of the first line is less certain: it has been read as prose, iambic trimeter, catalectic trochaic trimeter, or a lyric meter. The inscription subverts a common formula used for curses, promising a positive outcome where the second line foreshadows a negative one. Scholars disagree as to whether the "Nestor" of the inscription is the hero mentioned in the Iliad, and as to whether the poem would have been known in its present form by those writing or reading the inscription. If it does relate to the epic, the inscription also plays with the contrast between the small clay cup on which it was written and the legendary cup of Nestor described in the Iliad, which was so large that ordinary people could not lift it.

The interpretation of the inscription depends on a lacuna in the first line: depending on how it is restored, the inscription may be contrasting the cup from Pithekoussai with that of Nestor, or identifying the cup as one owned by Nestor. The original publication of the inscription accepted the first possibility; by 1976, P. A. Hansen wrote that "no less than fifteen" possible restorations of the first lacuna had been published. By the 1990s, it was generally thought that the cup is in fact claiming to be Nestor's. The restoration proposed by Yves Gerhard in 2011 once again argues that the inscription is contrasting the Pithekoussan cup with that of Nestor. Apart from its first line, most details of the text are generally considered settled by scholars.

Interpretation
The cup has been taken as evidence for communal wine-drinking among men, in a social ritual that became known as the symposium in the classical period. In 1994, Oswyn Murray called it the earliest definitive evidence of the ritual. Murray also suggested that the reference to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, indicated that the participants in the cup's use would be reclining, a distinctive feature of sympotic drinking in later Greek culture.