The Dreros inscription is the earliest surviving inscribed law from

ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

. It was discovered in

Dreros Dreros (), also (representing Modern Greek pronunciation) Driros, near Neapoli in the regional unit of Lasithi, Crete, is a post-Minoan archaeological site, northwest of Agios Nikolaos. Known only by a chance remark of the 9th-century Byzanti ...

, an ancient settlement on the island of

Crete Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...

, in 1936, and first published by Pierre Demargne and Henri van Effenterre in 1937. Thirteen stones inscribed with archaic letters were discovered in a

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

cistern in Dreros. These stones apparently came from the east wall of the temple of Apollo Delphinios, and make up eight inscriptions or fragments of inscriptions. This display of laws in public, often in sanctuaries, is a frequent feature of archaic Cretan law. The Dreros inscription is the longest of these eight laws. The Dreros law is inscribed on a block of grey schist. The block is broken into two parts, and in total measures . The block is inscribed with large, irregular letters high. Lilian H. Jeffery describes the lettering as "tall, thin, and straggling", and notes that it resembles the lettering on the

Dedication of Nikandre The Dedication of Nikandre is a Greek marble sculpture, made approximately around 650 BCE, held in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece (Inv. 1). Nikandre, a woman from the island of Naxos, dedicated the statue in the temple of Arte ...

. There are four full lines of text; in addition, between the first and second line there is a word inscribed in smaller letters. The first three full lines are written in

boustrophedon Boustrophedon () is a style of writing in which alternate lines of writing are reversed, with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style. This is in contrast to modern European languages, where lines always begin on the same side, usually the l ...

– that is, alternating between right-to-left and left-to-right. The fourth line begins a new clause, and again begins from the right – this is the first known example of this system of paragraphing in a Greek text. Between the first and second line a word has been added in smaller letters. The text dates to the second half of the seventh century BC, and is the oldest surviving Greek law. The law begins with an invocation to a god. It rules that anyone who holds the office of cannot hold it again for ten years after their term of office ends, and says that anyone who breaks the law is to be fined and deprived of civic rights. The final clause of the law lists the , , and the Twenty of the Polis as taking an oath to confirm the law. This restriction on holding the office of is paralleled in an inscription from

Gortyn Gortyn, Gortys or Gortyna (, , or , ) is a municipality, and an archaeological site, on the Mediterranean island of Crete away from the island's capital, Heraklion. The seat of the municipality is the village Agioi Deka. Gortyn was the Roman c ...

(the

Gortyn code The Gortyn code (also called the Great Code) was a legal code that was the codification of the civil law of the ancient Greek city-state of Gortyn in southern Crete. History Our sole source of knowledge of the code is the fragmentary boustr ...

), also on Crete, though there the restriction on holding the office was only to once every three years.

References

Works cited

* * * * * * * {{cite journal, last=Whitley, first=James, author-link=James Whitley (archaeologist), year=1997, title=Cretan Laws and Cretan Literacy, journal=American Journal of Archaeology, volume=101, issue=4, doi=10.2307/506828, jstor=506828 Ancient Greek law Ancient Crete Archaic Greece Greek inscriptions Archaeological discoveries in Crete 1936 archaeological discoveries 1936 in Greece