Nestor's Cup (Pithekoussai)

Common card · No. 475020

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 The cup was originally made in the eastern Aegean, either on the island of Rhodes or in northern Ionia.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...

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