Greek Inscriptions

While the texts of ancient authors are known only through later manuscript copies, inscriptions connect us directly with the Ancient Greeks themselves and reveal many aspects of their public and private lives. 'Greek Inscriptions', part of a series showing how ancient systems of writing and numbering were used and deciphered, introduces the reader to a wide variety of Greek inscriptions on stone slabs and on pottery, bronzes and other small objects in the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Beginning with relatively simple examples consisting wholly or partly of names, it progresses to more complicated texts, some of them in local dialects with distinctive alphabets. They range in date from the 7th century BC to the 3rd century AD. For readers with little or no knowledge of Ancient Greek, the actual texts are accompanied by translations, making it an ideal introduction for those wishing to translate for themselves Greek text on museum artefacts and at ancient s