Mission Report 2008

This year’s spring expedition in Egypt focused on Alexandria’s Eastern Harbour. Important new discoveries were made near Cape Lochias and on the Poseidium peninsula. At Cape Lochias we discovered the structure of a building stretching over 100 metres in length and 70 metres in width. On the Poseidium peninsula we were able to retrieve important artefacts, among them bronze statuettes and diorite sculptures that are linked to a temple. We have also found a finger from a Bronze statue; the size of the finger indicates that the statue itself must have measured about four metres in height. Another important discovery is that of a marble high relief depicting Hercules as a child lying on a lion skin. Several excavations were also performed on the ancient coast line, Antirhodos Island and the Poseidium. The stratigraphies brought very interesting results relevant to the occupation periods.

Another discovery was made in Alexandria’s Eastern Harbour close to the modern Corniche. A ceramic bowl was discovered at the foot of the peninsula that stretches towards the island of Antirhodos on the former coastline now submerged.

The bowl was found in an even context of the first half of the 1st century AD, associated with oriental sigillated, thin-walled goblets and imported culinary ceramic. This thin-walled ceramic, however, dates back to the 1st century BC. It is a careened cup with handles, well preserved. Close forms are present in Pergamon, for production between the late 2nd century BC and the early 1st century AD. Bearing in mind the technical characteristics and type of this specimen, this jug very likely comes from a workshop in the west of Asia Minor.

This bowl is engraved with DIA CHRSTOU O GOISTAIS made after baking as the incisions have taken away the slip. This inscription is at least enigmatic; it dates back either to the 1st century BC (dating of the ceramic) or the first half of the 1st century AD (dating of the occupation) and offers different hypotheses of reading.

For Pr. Bert Smith of Oxford University, it might be a dedication or a present made by a certain Chrestos belonging to an association (maybe religious) called Ogoistais. In this sense, Pr. Klaus Hallof, director of the Institute of Greek inscriptions in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of inscriptions believes that it is necessary to connect “ogostai” to known Greek denominations of religious associations such as Hermaistai, Athenaistai, Isiastai which gathered worshippers of the god Hermes or the goddess Athena and Isis. “Ogo”, according to this hypothesis, would be a divine form of expressing the god Osogo or Ogoa of whom Strabon and Pausanias talk with regard to a divinity worshipped in Milas, in Caria.

According to the interpretation of Pr. André Bernand, Professor emeritus of French Universities, Goistais might be a mistaken graphic of goes, the “goet”, that is, the “magician, the sorcerer, the charmer, the magus”. This hypothesis becomes even more seducing as the expression introduced by “dia” is typical of these casters of chance and soothsayers well-known by the classical texts. According to this supposition, the writing could then be translated either as “by Chrestos/Christos the magician”, or “the magician by Chrestos/Christos”.