Stone of Terpon
The Stone of Terpon or Pebble of Antibes is an ancient artifact excavated near the seawall of Antibes, France 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.Inscription
The stone is formed in a phallic shape, with a carved inscription in Ionic Greek reading:
In standard Greek orthography the text would read:
It forms a distych in dactylic hexameter:
The inscription can be roughly translated as: "I am Terpon, servant of noble Aphrodite, may Kypris return grace to those who set up."
