Stone Medallion

[lango1ier]

My wife bought this several years ago at an auction. The story was that years before then an engineer who helped put in a sewer system brought it back from Italy or Greece, can't remember which.

The stone may be marble and is 5 3/4 inches in diameter. The edge views have each been sequentially rotated about 1/7 turn to the left. The first and last couple of images duplicate.

 

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[yaxthri]

Hello there interesting find.
I'd love to see some more, sharper pictures of the front and especially the backside (are these animals forming a spiral, wolves?).

This is like nothing I've seen and the letters look a bit like from the etruscan alphabet so maybe it is from Italy, they had a wolf-god called Calu and also lots of serpent related religious depictions and mixed animal-human deities. But not much is known about their mythology...
But the snakes and the cock features (comb or crown and maybe bird-legs) of the mythical half human beign depicted also remind me of gnostic Abrasax (Abraxas) stone charms but this "guy" looks different (Abraxas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
The letters look also a bit like nordic runes (the etruscan alphabet has many similar symbols) but the story of origin would be then completely wrong.

This is a fascinating and mysterious piece...
Hope someone else has something to contribute about it.

I don't mean to point fingers but if it came from Greece you should know that this is stollen property according to greek laws and I think Italy has similar laws about "exporting" ancient artifacts.
Don't show it much around... The auctioneer should have given you provenance paperwork about this piece if it is legally aquired by him/her.

 

[Joseph Gilbert]

My wife bought this several years ago at an auction. The story was that years before then an engineer who helped put in a sewer system brought it back from Italy or Greece, can't remember which.

The stone may be marble and is 5 3/4 inches in diameter. The edge views have each been sequentially rotated about 1/7 turn to the left. The first and last couple of images duplicate.

<img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=726991"/><img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=726993"/>
<img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=726995"/><img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=726996"/><img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=726997"/><img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=726998"/><img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=726999"/><img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=727022"/><img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=727023"/><img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=727024"/><img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=727025"/>

To me your mystery disk looks allot like this Greek/roman disk that has never been deciphered yet. If I was you I would let a museum curator that specializes in Greek/Roman history take a look at it it may be of great importance historically! It may even unlock some historical secrets!

 

[yaxthri]

To me your mystery disk looks allot like this Greek/roman disk that has never been deciphered yet. If I was you I would let a museum curator that specializes in Greek/Roman history take a look at it it may be of great importance historically! It may even unlock some historical secrets!

I'm with you Joseph Gilbert on the museum curator suggestion.
But I have to disagree that the disc in the post looks anything like this one. This is made of clay, the markings have been pressed into the clay with stamps, the one shown here is carved in rock...
This disc called the "Phaestos disc" was found on the island of Crete and is supposed to be Minoan. It's not greek-roman, it's about a millenium older if the supposed dating is correct. I wrote "supposed" because it is a highly controversial find since no other like it or even remotely similar find has ever been found. I must add that a lot of serious archaeologists thought and think this may have been "fabricated".