A Bosporan Dedication to Zeus Hypsistos Aniketos

Levinskaya Irina A.

The author publishes an inscription from Panticapaeum which is a dedication to Zeus Hypsistos pantokrator almighty (оr kosmokrator: only the ending -κράτωρ survived) aniketos. There is a possibility that the beginning of the inscription was metrical, but even if this is not the case, the text was definitely under the influence of hymnography. The part of the inscription that has not survived may have contained a list of Zeus’ epithets. In this case  νίκητος was just one of them. But given that ‘invincible’ was the traditional epithet of Mithra we cannot exclude that the lacuna contained either the name of Mithra or those of both Mithra and Helios. In this case the word with the ending -κράτωρ could be supplemented as κοσμοκράτωρ.

Keywords: Greek epigraphy of the Bosporan Kingdom, Panticapaeum, the cult of Zeus Hypsistos, the cult of Mithra
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