Nestor's Cup
Nearly 2,800 years ago someone scratched three lines into this clay cup: Nestor had a fine cup, but whoever drinks from this one will be seized by desire. It is among the earliest writing in the Greek alphabet that survives, and the first thing anyone chose to write with it was a joke about a poem.
Based on the original, Museo Archeologico di Pithecusae, Villa Arbusto, Lacco Ameno, Ischia.
Found: cremation grave 168, San Montano cemetery, Pithekoussai (Ischia, Bay of Naples), excavated 1954–55.
What it is
A small two-handled drinking cup, about ten centimetres high, made in the eastern Aegean around 735–720 BC and carried west to Pithekoussai, a Greek trading post on the island of Ischia. The inscription was scratched in after firing, in three lines, running right to left. The second and third lines scan as verse.
The joke
In the Iliad, old Nestor owns a great gold cup so heavy that other men can barely lift it when it is full. This one is a plain clay cup. Its owner is bragging that it does something better than Nestor's.
What it does not prove
Scholars argue about what the joke tells us. Some read it as proof that a written Iliad already existed; others say only that everyone at the table knew the story. So this card says "a poem", not "the Iliad".
Where it was found
It came out of a cremation grave: someone's ashes were buried with it. The cup survived because it went into the ground with a person, and it is worth remembering that when looking at it.
- Homer, Iliad 11.632–637, Nestor's cup
- Buchner & Russo, 'La coppa di Nestore e un'iscrizione metrica da Pitecusa', Rendiconti dell'Accademia dei Lincei (1955)
- Powell, Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet (1991)
- Picture: rendered from our own 3D model, the one on the workbench: a reconstruction, not a record of how it looked.