Zeus, holding a thunderbolt in his right hand, sits on a throne at center. Facing him is Apollo, playing the kithara (lyre), and the smaller figure behind him is identified as Hermes by the caduceus, his winged herald's staff. Above the gods is a chariot pulled by four winged horses. Below, a long Cypro-syllabic inscription expresses homespun philosophical sentiments about fate and the gods.
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Title:Limestone inscribed relief
Period:Hellenistic
Date:ca. 3rd century BCE
Culture:Cypriot
Medium:Limestone
Dimensions:WebPub GR 2012 Cesnola: 12 × 16 3/16 in., 16.5 lb. (30.5 × 41.1 cm, 7.5 kg)
Classification:Cesnola Inscriptions
Credit Line:The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874–76
Accession Number:74.51.2370
Inscription: Verse inscription in a local dialect of Greek using the Cypriot syllabic script: "Rejoice. Eat, lord, and drink. But here is an important word [of advice]. Never before the immortal gods ask greedily for all that you want, for no man has control over the supernatural. Rather, to god is allotted the power to direct all the things that men have in mind. Rejoice."
Said to be from the sanctuary of Ayios Photios, Golgoi, Cyprus
Doell, Johannes. 1873. Die Sammlung Cesnola. no. 764, p. 48, pl. XI.3, St. Petersburg: L’Académie Impérial des Sciences.
Hall, Isaac H. 1874. "Cypriote Inscriptions of the Di Cesnola Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art." Journal of the American Oriental Society, 10: no. 13, pp. 209–11, pl. IV.
Cesnola, Luigi Palma di. 1877. Cyprus: Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples. A Narrative of Researches and Excavations During Ten Years' Residence in That Island. no. 1, p. 47, pl. XLVIII.1.1, London: John Murray.
Cesnola, Luigi Palma di. 1885. A Descriptive Atlas of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Vol. 1. pl. LXXXV.559, Boston: James R. Osgood and Company.
Cesnola, Luigi Palma di. 1903. A Descriptive Atlas of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Vol. 3. pl. CXXX.3, Boston: James R. Osgood and Company.
Myres, John L. 1914. Handbook of the Cesnola Collection of Antiquities from Cyprus. no. 1869, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Masson, Olivier. 1961. Les Inscriptions Chypriotes Syllabiques: Recueil Critique et Commenté. no. 264, pl. XLVI, Paris: E. de Boccard.
Karageorghis, Vassos. 1998. Greek God and Heroes in Ancient Cyprus. p. 188, fig. 138, Athens: Commerical Bank of Greece.
Karageorghis, Vassos, Joan Mertens, and Marice E. Rose. 2000. Ancient Art from Cyprus: The Cesnola Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. no. 414, p. 256, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hermary, Antoine and Joan R. Mertens. 2013. The Cesnola Collection of Cypriot Art : Stone Sculpture. no. 455, pp. 326–27, Online Publication, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Counts, Derek B. 2014. "Myth into Art: Foreign Impulses and Local Reponses in Archaic Cypriot Sanctuaries." The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, Arthur Bernard Knapp and Peter van Dommelen, eds. pp. 285–6, fig. 16.1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
