Cippus

A cippus (plural: cippi) (English: pointed pole) is a low, round or rectangular pedestal set up by the Ancient Romans for military purposes such as a milestone or a boundary post. Made of wood or stone, inscriptions on the stone cippi indicate their function or the area that they surrounded, like sanctuaries and temple areas. In Rome they marked the limits of the Pomerium, the course of aqueducts and Cursus publicus. Cippi lined up in rows were also often numbered, often featuring the name of the person placing them or the distance to the nearest cippus. The inscriptions on some cippi show that they were occasionally used as funeral memorials.[1]

Various forms of Cippi

Etruscan cippi

Between 800–100 CE Cippi were used by the Etruscans as tombstones, which were shaped differently depending on the place and time of origin. Cippi were set up as a stele, column or sculpture in the dromos of an Etruscan grave or at the grave entrance. The cippi had a magical and religious significance. Cippi may have the shape of a cube, knob, onion, egg, ball or cylinder. There are connections between certain shapes and the representation of canopic jars; cinerary urns that were made in the shape of a human torso, and the head as a lid.[2][3]

  • In Cerveteri, the cippi of female and male burials were different. Male dead received a column (phallus), women small houses or temples.
  • The Pietra fetida monuments (6th – 5th centuries BC) from the area around Chiusi show a combination of the cinerary urn and cippus. They contain the ashes of the dead in an opening in their base.
  • In Orvieto there were two so-called warrior head cippi with images of human heads (late 6th century BC).
  • In Perugia, fluted columns with acanthus were used.
  • From the 4th century BC cippi also have name inscriptions.

The "Cippus Abellanus" (in the Oscan language), like the "Cippus Perusinus," is not a tombstone.[4]

Punic cippi

Carthaginian cippi have a base similar to Egyptian steles, which are sometimes also referred to as cippi ("Cippi Metternich" in the British Museum). Punic Cippi were found in North Africa, but also in Sardinia (Cagliari, Teti, Tharros), Sicily (Motya) and Spain (Huelva and Barcelona).[1] The Cippi of Melqart found in Malta, which bear a Phoenician and a Greek inscription, and made it possible for the first time to understand the Phoenician alphabet.[5]

Further reading
  • Blumhofer, Martin (1993). Etruskische Cippi | Untersuchungen am Beispiel von Cerveteri. Arbeiten zur Archäologie (in German). Böhlau. ISBN 3-412-06993-0.
  • Kaimio, Jorma (2017). The South Etruscan Cippus Inscriptions. Institutum Romanum Finlandiae. ISBN 978-88-7140-781-4.

References
  1. Cippus. Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (in German). Stuttgart. 1899. pp. 2563–2565 – via wikisource.org. Band III,2
  2. Cebrián Fernández, Rosario (2000). Titulum fecit: la producción epigráfica romana en las tierras valencianas. Los soportes (in Spanish). Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia. p. 101. ISBN 9788489512733.
  3. Cooley, Alison E. (2012). The Cambridge Manual of Latin Epigraphy. Cambridge University Press. p. 58. ISBN 9781139576604.
  4. "National Archaeological Museum of Perugia - The Cippus of Perugia".
  5. Pierret, Philippe (2005). Mémoires, mentalités religieuses, art funéraire. Peeters. p. 220.
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