1I would like to thank Corinna Reinhardt and Nikolaus Dietrich for their valuable feedback on an earlier version of this article. I also wish to extend my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their thorough evaluation and helpful comments. Their insights have greatly enhanced the quality and clarity of this text. All remaining errors are my own.
2For the concept of reciprocity in Greek religion see Parker 1998. On the logic behind the korai as agalmata in the context of their function as votive gifts, see Neer 2010, p. 53-57. For an overview of Archaic korai and kouroi as votives see Boardman et. al. 2005, p. 289-291.
3On ancient (votive) statuettes see Mitten 1988, esp. p. 3-4. On the smallness of figurines as not a flaw but a value in its own right see Neer 2020.
4Much has been said about the meaning of votive inscriptions. The most unanimous interpretation considers votive inscriptions in connection to prayers and the dedicatory act itself, see Raubitschek 1967, p. 17-26; Day 1994, 2000 and 2010.
5In the Archaic period, anthropomorphic statuettes could be inscribed in various ways. In this paper, I will solely focus on inscriptions that are situated on the body of the statuette as opposed to inscriptions on the plinth, which is also a common place for writing. For examples of inscriptions on the plinths of small-scale bronzes see Fouquet 2022, p. 148, note 14. Most inscriptions on monumental sculptures are also situated on the base, although some statues from the Eastern Greek region bear the inscription directly on the body. This has been mostly overlooked as a general phenomenon, although individual cases of inscribed bodies have been thoroughly studied. On the inscription on the thigh of the Kouros of Samos see Lorenz 2010. Dietrich 2017, esp. p. 305-308 studied the practice of writing on the garments of Archaic Korai. Dietrich also discusses the layout of the dedicatory inscription on the body of the so-called Nikandre, Dietrich 2020.
6My definition of materiality is based on Tim Ingold, who attempted to synthesize different theories of materiality by confronting abstract concepts with the tangible properties of materials and the (production) techniques of artefacts, Ingold 2007, p. 7. However, this explicitly includes the discursive qualities of materials.
7Recent work has highlighted the material and aesthetic qualities of ancient inscriptions, mostly focusing on inscriptions on large-scale stone monuments see Dietrich et al. 2020 and Dietrich, Fouquet 2022. On the materiality of ancient inscriptions see Petrovic et al. 2018 and Angliker, Bultrighini 2023. On text and image on votives specifically see Gaifman 2008. For a more general discussion of text-image relations in the Graeco-Roman world see Squire 2009.
8Important studies that have drawn attention to the inscriptions’ nature of ‘being-read’ include Svenbro 1988, Day 1989 and 2010.
9Of course, large-scale comparanda from the Archaic and Early Classical periods often exhibit an appellative nature, as demonstrated by the inscriptions’ frontal alignment along sacred routes or direct address to the reader-viewer in the case of funerary inscriptions. See Day 2010, p. 48-53 on artistic strategies of Archaic dedicatory epigrams from the Athenian Acropolis to attract attention to the monument. Yet, ascribing similar qualities to inscriptions on small statuettes proves more challenging due to the heterogeneous nature of the evidence available.
10For instance, Cléo Carastro has shown through the so-called katadesmoi that ancient Greek writing doesn't always have to be designed for later readability. The katadesmoi were buried and therefore hidden from any potential reader. The katadesmoi also provide an interesting counterpoint to the idea that writing must necessarily be associated with transcribing previously spoken words, as is also commonly assumed for votive inscriptions, cf. Carastro 2010, p. 266-267. On the role of inscriptions as a repetition of the act of dedication, see Day 2010.
11This notion aligns with other forms of personal interaction by means of inscriptions, e.g. inscribing one’s name and other components of identity, cf. Sot 2019.
14This is, of course, in addition to qualities such as hardness or softness, which generally reveal themselves to the maker at every stage of production.
15Cf. Hodder 2011. Whitley 2017 has coined the term for Archaic Greek writing practices with special emphasis on the development of early writing.
18The chronology of writing varies from medium to medium. While in vase painting the dipinti were done before firing and are therefore probably more closely aligned with the initial design, inscriptions on the bases of monumental sculptures are much more independent from the image and could have theoretically been added at any given moment. On inscription as part of vase paintings see Lissarrague [1987] 1990, p. 126-128; Gerleigner 2015, p. 223. On the inscriptions’ independence from the pictorial content of stone monuments in Archaic and Early Classical times see Reinhardt 2020, esp. p. 91: “In our cases, the figure and the inscription are components of the same tomb and can therefore be perceived together by the recipient, but a complementary concept as in the case of modern comics cannot be inferred” (original in German, own translation).
19On inscriptions as later additions on stone sculpture, or at least appearing to be so, see Dietrich 2020, p. 180-187.
20See Reinhardt 2020 as cited above.
21Boston, MFA, inv. 98.658. Richter 1968, p. 87; Vermeule, Comstock 1971, p. 20-22; Frontisi-Ducroux 1975, p. 118-120; Morris 1992, p. 53-59.
23Frontisi-Ducroux 1975, p. 118 with older literature.
24Ibid., p. 119 agrees with Jeffrey 1990, p. 202 that the script is laconic.
25British Museum 1814,0704.1284. Richter 1968, p. 107 with older literature.
26This corresponds with writing practices on many large-scale korai from Ionia, where the inscription is also written on the peplos, fitted into the folds. On writing on monumental korai see Dietrich 2017, p. 298-315. Notably, there is not total precision in the way that the script is fitted into the garment folds. In large-scale sculpture, the incisions are not as carefully done as one might expect them to be; on the ‘sloppiness’ of Archaic writing see Dietrich 2020, p. 184.
27Unlike the daidaleia-inscription, this younger inscription is no longer written according to the logic of the Boustrophedon style, but the lines break off and begin from the bottom of each new fold in only one writing direction. This corresponds with the writing practices of the early 5th century and explains the different divisions.
28Cf. Dietrich 2020, p. 180-187. If a part of the word or section of an inscription was still missing at the end of the designated writing area, it seemed to be perfectly feasible to write the rest, often in a retrograde fashion, below the previous part. See Reinhardt 2020, p. 70 with examples from Attica.
29To my knowledge, there is only one example from smaller-scale sculpture where the writing area on a statuette’s body shows signs of being prepared and flattened before the act of inscription, namely the dedication of a certain Hermonax from Myous, now in Berlin, Staatliche Museen, inv. SK 1673, dated to around 550 BCE. Attic bases, where inscriptions on monumental (stone) sculptures are usually situated, would be prepared and flattened before inscribing them, Reinhardt 2020, p. 80.
30Compare the findings of Dietrich et al. 2020 on inscribing surfaces according to their given shape and structure, best summarized by Fouquet 2020, p. 104.
31This also indicates how the reception of the inscription can be conceived in relation to the body, that is, not separately but nevertheless distinctively, as theorized by Dietrich 2020, p. 191.
32This might be especially true for illiterate or semi-illiterate readers. On the spread of Greek literacy, see Johnston 1983; Harris 1989, p. 45-64; Robb 1994.
33See, for example, the traces of color of the peplos on the so-called Peplos Kore from the Athenian Acropolis, dated to around 520 BCE, Athens, Acropolis Museum inv. 679 or color traces on the hem of a late Archaic kore from the Athenian Acropolis, c. 500 BCE, Athens, Acropolis Museum, inv. 674. For reconstructions of Archaic polychromy on monumental sculpture see Brinkmann 2003. See also Reinhardt 2020, p. 71 with reference to inscriptions as “ornamental bands”. On the ornamental character of writing, especially of inscriptions, see Butz 2010. On re-applying color as part of a statue’s kosmēsis see Stager 2022, p. 90-133.
34Neer 1995, p. 121 describes poikilia as “an elaborate surface patterning”; Stieber 2004, p. 135 characterizes the Korai as “living poikilia”; cf. Dietrich 2017, p. 279, who recognizes poikilia on Archaic korai in the “frontal density of detail”. Amy Lather also takes up this conceptualization in her study on materiality in Greek poetry for her investigation of textile design on korai, cf. Lather 2021, p. 29. The concept of poikilia is particularly associated with textiles in Greek sources, cf. ibid., p. 18.
36For tooling and texturing bronze surfaces as an invitation for touch see Stewart 2015, p. 36.
38Day 2010, p. 23; see also Platt 2018, p. 148: “As portable, tangible objects, figurines in both bronze and terracotta invite an attentive mode of engagement from their mortal viewers that, in turn, draws the divine into an affective bond with the object and its dedicator.”
39On the material efficacy of writing using curse inscriptions on 5th century katadesmoi see Carastro 2010, p. 278-283.
40On the principle of do-ut-des in Greek prayer or oath, see Pulleyn 1997, p. 17.
41Brouillet, Carastro 2018, p. 93.
42Grand-Clément 2011, p. 275-276.
43Frontisi-Ducroux 1975, p. 119.
45For dadaila in epic poetry: Morris 1992, p. 3-35.
47Thus, for example, the adjective πολυδαίδαλος is usually associated with great craftsmanship in Homer, Illiad 3.385; 7.252; 11.32, 436; 24. 597; Odyssey 6.15; 13.11; 17.295. On the lexical study of the word-group see Frontisi-Ducroux 1975, p. 35-35. On the name Daidalos there is a revealing reference in Pausanias: “ἐκάλουν δὲ ἐμοὶ δοκεῖν πρότερον ἔτι ἢ Δαίδαλος ὁ Παλαμάονος ἐγένετο Ἀθήνῃσι, τούτῳ δὲ ὕστερον ἀπὸ τῶν δαιδάλων ἐπίκλησιν γενέσθαι δοκῶ καὶ οὐκ ἐκ γενετῆς τεθῆναι τὸ ὄνομα”, “My own view is that this name was given to wooden images before Daedalus, the son of Palamaon, was born at Athens, and that he did not receive this name at birth, but that it was a surname afterwards given him from the daedala”, Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.3.2, transl. by Jones 1918.
48Frontisi-Ducroux 1975, p. 45. In Homer, of course, they appear most frequently in connection with weapons or the hero’s attire, cf. Morris 1992, p. 4-8 with examples. Here, of course, the adjective is often associated with the hero’s armament, and thus his aristeia and his kleos. An example from Hesiod concerns the daedalic dress of Pandora, cf. Hesiod, Theogony 574.
49Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.3.2: ἐπὶ ταύταις ταῖς διαλλαγαῖς Δαίδαλα ἑορτὴν ἄγουσιν, ὅτι οἱ πάλαι τὰ ξόανα ἐκάλουν δαίδαλα, “To commemorate this reconciliation they celebrate a festival called Daedala, because the men of old time gave the name of daedala to wooden images.” Transl. by Jones 1918.
50On inlaid eyes in early bronze statues see Hemingway, Abramitis 2017, p. 55-60. On adorning and dressing, and even the washing of specifically cult statues, see Hölscher 2014, p. 164 and more generally Scheer 2000.
51Carl Robert considers the Artemis Daidaleia to be an actual miniature of the cult statue, Robert 1901, p. 2003-2004. This remains speculative. Ultimately, the statuette does not have to be a copy of the cult statue to refer to it; the presence of the goddess is implied in both images anyway. Richard Neer answers the fundamental question of whether miniature images of the deities in the sanctuary imitate or even resemble the cultural statue at all with restraint, Neer 2020, p. 34. In any case, the phenomenon of “copying” larger cult statues in smaller scale format is well known, cf. Gaifman 2016.
52The sleek surface must not be confused with being plain. As scholarship has shown, bronze surfaces might even have shown sophisticated effects of polychromy, cf. Descamps-Lequime 2015.
53Brouillet, Carastro 2018, p. 101-102.
54Compare instances of so-called nonsense inscriptions on pottery, which might show that applying writing highlighted the object’s value, cf. Kästner 2007, p. 28-29. For an opposing view see Chiarini 2018, p. 19-31.
56This can also be true for other examples, especially votive inscriptions written in hexameters or using Homeric language. Joseph Day has discussed the epigram of the so-called Mantiklos Apollo that belongs in a Homeric context, cf. Day 2010, p. 40-42.
58Van Straten 1981, p. 73 cites the Mantiklos Apollo as an example of do-ut-des.
60Joseph Day suggests that we think of Mantiklos on a tripod, Day 2010, p. 27, which would further isolate the statuette from a potential viewer and rather situate the near-sightness with the object in the realm of the writer, maker or dedicator. For anthropomorphic statuettes on tripods, sometimes at considerable heights, see Papalexandrou 2005, p. 149-189.
61Shakeshaft 2022, p. 28. On the power of praise for convincing the deity, see Furley 1995.
62I follow Hugo Shakeshaft’s characterization of charis as being both an aesthetic quality as well as an ideal of social reciprocity, cf. Shakeshaft 2019, p. 7. Shakeshaft has also shown to what extent the statuette of Mantiklos Apollo fulfills the requirements for being an object of charis, Shakeshaft 2022, p. 27-35. On the importance of charis for ritual acts in general, see Pulleyn 1997. On the concept of charis in dedicatory epigrams, which express not only the charis of the inscribed object but also the charis of the dedicatory ritual, see Day 1994, p. 55-63.
63For a discussion of radiance or shining appearance within the semantic realm of beauty and charis, see Shakeshaft 2019, p. 4-5, 8-10, 19-20.
65The focus here is especially on the radiance of the heroic armor, for example spears that shone to heaven, Homer, Illiad 11.44-5; compare the sun-reflecting helmets, newly smoothed armor and shining, almost dazzling shields in Homer, Illiad 13.340-4 and breastplates and lances that light up the earth in Homer, Illiad 19.362. These are only a few examples; for a closer discussion of the radiant effect of bronze in epic poetry see Lather 2021, p. 69-74.
66Cf. Stewart 2015, p. 35: “Bronze is hard, strong, resilient, and flexible, and a body made of it naturally takes on some or all of these attributes in the observer’s mind.”
67The knowledgeable person will also have known when looking at bronze statues that a hollow casting was used, and thus the bronze can be considered in the role of human skin for the body, Stewart 2015, p. 35.
68For Greek muscle cuirasses see Snodgrass 1967, p. 92.
69Jean-Pierre Vernant paraphrased this phenomenon in his famous idea that the body of the Greek man was a weapon: Vernant 1986, p. 19-46. Hölscher 2014, p. 174, follows this up by formulating that weapons made of bronze were living, that is, effective elements of the male body. An example from the Homeric context is the episode in which Hector’s armor clings so inextricably to his body that Ares can fill it with strength, Homer, Illiad 17.210-14. Carol Mattusch points out that the shiny surface of bronze is closely associated with the idea of the naked athletic body: Mattusch 2014, p. 33.
70A more detailed analysis of the vitality of bronze within the realm of Greek epic is found in Lather 2021, p. 64-94.
71Cf. Homer, Illiad 18.478-608; Homer, Odyssey 19.225-35.
72Cf. the analysis on the shield of Achilles by Neer 2020, p. 17-18 and the differences in size stressed there as well, inviting near-sightedness while emphasizing the proportions and also the smallness.
73Providence, RISD, inv. 54.001; Brinkerhoff 1958, p. 151.
74The figure is identified by Claude Rolley as Boeotian, Rolley 1969, p. 128.
75A comparative finding is a bronze statuette of similar size and dating with inscription on the outside of both legs, Berlin, Staatliche Museen Misc., 7100, Neugebauer 1931, p. 100.
76An analogous, though in this case almost opposite, claim has been made by Katharina Lorenz regarding the Kouros of Samos, where the small inscription on the big body concentrates the gaze, potentiating the monumental size of the sculpture: Lorenz 2010, p. 135. Richard Neer has stressed that size – both smallness and monumentality – are not absolute but relative impressions: Neer 2020, p. 12.
77Akribeia is not attested before the 5th century BCE and is not limited to craftmanship, but generally denotes accuracy, on akribeia see Kurz 1970.
78Casson 1935, p. 511-512; Jeffrey 1990, p. 91.
79Richard Neer has analyzed the admiration of smallness under the Greek concept of thauma, wonder, cf. NEER 2020.
83Certainly, writing on the body in its three-dimensionality might have had different effects on the reception. First, the inscription can be read partially. For instance, by only reading the first ‘line’, the reader already gains knowledge of the donor’s name and the recipient of the votive through the god's epithet, representing the two most pivotal participants in the act of dedication. Cf. the observations by Joseph Day on the possibilities of partial readings of the Mantiklos Apollo mentioned above, Day 2010, p. 39-40. Should the reader choose to read both lines, a multi-perspectival engagement with the statuette is achieved. This is also supported by Joseph Day’s extensive study of the Mantiklos Apollo, which also suggests that the placement on the round thighs of the figurine may have encouraged viewers to look at the figure from a side view as well, cf. ibid., p. 38.
84On inscriptions on the thighs, which is a rare, though as such standardized writing practice on large scale kouroi see Lorenz 2010.
85The thighs can be associated with a male ideal of beauty, see Stähli 1999; cf. the description of Odysseus: αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς / ζώσατο μὲν ῥάκεσιν περὶ μήδεα, φαῖνε δὲ μηροὺς / καλούς τε μεγάλους τε, φάνεν δέ οἱ εὐρέες ὦμοι / στήθεά τε στιβαροί τε βραχίονες; “But Odysseus girded his rags about his loins and showed his thighs, comely and great, and his broad shoulders came to view, and his chest and mighty arms.” Homer, Odyssey 18.67-69, transl. by Murray 1919.
86The idea of craftmanship that endows the artwork with life is common in ancient Greek thought, see Spivey 1995.
