In the 8th century BC e. On the island of Rhodes, the Cup of Nestor was made - a dishware with scratched letters in ancient Greek. It is one of the earliest known texts written in the Greek alphabet. The peculiarity is that we have before us the Euboean form of the alphabet, which was common in Eretria, Chalkis and several colonies in the southern regions of Italy. It is believed that it was this alphabet that laid the foundation for Etruscan, and then Latin writing. It may have been specially designed for epic poetry.
The bowl was discovered in 1954 during excavations on the island of Ischia. The artifact was in a grave with cremated remains that belonged to several people and animals. Along with the bones, parts of other pottery and a silver fibula were found in the burial.
The text on the bowl is arranged in three lines, the second and third are written in dactylic hexameter. The key is the first line, and it can be understood in two ways. The interpretation depends on reading the damaged places, which, unfortunately, cannot be restored. The bowl could have belonged to a man named Nestor. According to this version, some of the remains in the burial belonged to the owner of the bowl. This opinion is confirmed by several options for restoring the text.
At the same time, we can talk about another Nestor - the mythical king of Pylos, who owned a beautiful golden goblet. A fictional artifact known as the Cup of Nestor is mentioned in Homer's Iliad. The German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, explorer of Troy, discovered a golden cup in Mycenae, which he identified with the goblet described in the Iliad. Thus, both bowls can be connected directly and indirectly with King Nestor: from Mycenae and from Ischia.
