The Stone of Terpon or Pebble of Antibes (''Galet d'Antibes'') is an ancient artifact excavated near the

seawall A seawall (or sea wall) is a form of coastal defense constructed where the sea, and associated coastal processes, impact directly upon the landforms of the coast. The purpose of a seawall is to protect areas of human habitation, conservation ...

Antibes Antibes (, also , ; oc, label= Provençal, Antíbol) is a coastal city in the Alpes-Maritimes department of southeastern France, on the Côte d'Azur between Cannes and Nice. The town of Juan-les-Pins is in the commune of Antibes and the Sop ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

(the ancient ''Antipolis'') in 1866

. The stone is held in the Musée d’Histoire et d’Archéologie adjacent to that same seawall in Antibes. The stone's inscription has been dated to between 450 and 425 BC

and the object may once have marked the entrance to a

brothel A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub p ...

Inscription

The stone is formed in a phallic shape (23" long, 8" thick, 73 lbs.), with a carved inscription in

Ionic Greek Ionic Greek ( grc, Ἑλληνικὴ Ἰωνική, Hellēnikē Iōnikē) was a subdialect of the Attic–Ionic or Eastern dialect group of Ancient Greek. History The Ionic dialect appears to have originally spread from the Greek mainland acro ...

reading: :ΤΕΡΠΩΝ ΕΙΜΙ ΘΕΑΣ ΘΕΡΑΠΩΝ
ΣΕΜΝΗΣ ΑΦΡΟΔΙΤΗΣ
ΤΟΙΣ ΔΕ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΗΣΑΣΙ ΚΥΠΡΙΣ
ΧΑΡΙΝ ΑΝΤΑΠΟΔΟΙΗ In standard Greek orthography the text would read: :. It forms a distych in

dactylic hexameter Dactylic hexameter (also known as heroic hexameter and the meter of epic) is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The scheme of the hexameter is usually as follows (writing – for a long syllable ...

: The inscription can be roughly translated as: "I am Terpon, servant of noble

Aphrodite Aphrodite ( ; grc-gre, Ἀφροδίτη, Aphrodítē; , , ) is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess . Aphrodite's major symbols incl ...

, may Kypris return grace to those who set up (the stone)."

Catalog references

*L.H. Jeffery: ''Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (LSAG)'', no. 288.03 *H. Roehl, ''Inscriptiones Graecae antiquissimae (IGA)'', no. 551 *H. Roehl, ''Imagines Inscriptionum Graecarum antiquissimarum'', edition 3 pp. 31 no. 52 *''Carmina Epigraphica Graeca'', no. 400. Steles Archaeology of France Antibes {{Europe-archaeology-stub