During the late excavation of a 1st - century CE Thracian tomb in Bulgaria , archaeologist discovered something whole unexpected : a mud watercraft encipher with Hellenic character . The writing come out to be printed onto the vessel , rather than carve into it , and was scrawled in apparently random counselling ; while some of the words were written horizontally , others proceeded vertically or diagonally .
And , even stranger , archaeologists pull in upon translating the writing that it was n’t the work of a 1st - century CE Thracian but that of Solon , a Greek poet and politico from the fifth century BCE .
That Solon ’s poem , “ Prayer to the Muses , ” should appear on a clay balsamarium ( a vessel used to nurse cream or oils ) was surprising . But the strange arrangement of the lettering on the vas made the rule even more cryptical .
Fortunately , the archaeologists , lead by Kostadin Kisyov , director of the Plovdiv Museum of Archaeology , were capable to get to the bottom of the mystery . Kisyov explicate toArchaeology in Bulgariathat the writing on the balsamarium was likely accidental . At some point , the vas was enclose in lambskin , and the verse form printed on the lambskin simply chafe off .
The theory explain why the writing on the balsamarium was printed in multiple steering , but it does n’t explicate why a Thracian from the first C CE was swallow with a Hellenic poem from the fifth century BCE .
According to Kisyov , there ’s a pretty simple account for that , too . It ’s likely that the person who owned the watercraft — plausibly an educated spiritual figure — was simply a fan of classic verse . Kisyov explained , “ These work were sell inantiquitylikebooks . The owner of thisparchmentacquired it because he liked whatSolonhad indite . ”
The lettering on the vessel concord meaning keys to what life was like in Thrace during the first century CE . The archaeologists now sleep with these Thracians were not only literate , but that they could read Greek — a surprising discovery , since by then Thrace was under the rule of the Roman Empire . It also exhibit they had entree to some of the great literary works of ancient Greece .
For the curious , here ’s the excerpt from “ Prayer to the Muses ” that this anon. 1st - century Thracian liked so much ( the parts of the verse line missing from the balsamarium are in wall bracket ):
“ [ yield me from the blessed gods prosperity , and]from all human race the possession ever of good repute;[and that I may thus be a delight to my friends , and an affliction to my foes , by the first revered ] , by the others beheld with dread . ”
[ h / t : archeology in Bulgaria ]
