Description: Lead tablet with a single fold. W: 12.6 cm × H: 2.1 cm × D: 0.12 cm.
Layout description: Lead tablet with a single fold. It preserves one inscription on side A (15A) and three on side B (16B, 17B, and 18B). Inscriptions 15A and 16B were written by the same hand: 15A records Thelytos’ question, whereas 16B gives only his name. Evangelidis edited 17B together with 16B, and CIOD likewise includes both texts under the same lemma. As the editors of I.Dodone DVC point out, however, 17B and 18B are independent inscriptions, with 17B incised over 18B, which is therefore earlier. Inscription 18B was not identified by Evangelidis.
Dialect: Thessalian (Histiaeotis).
Alphabet: Archaic, red (Ψ for X).

Date: 5th century BC.

Findspot: Dodona, Evangelidis’ excavation 1952.
Original location: Dodona
Last recorded location: Archaeological Museum of Ioannina inv. M41.

Editor(s): Elena Martín González; Stavroula Konstantopoulou
Edition based on: Facsimile and photograph. On display at the exhibition.

Bibliography: Evangelidis 1952, 302 (BE 1956, 143.8; SEG 15.388); I.Dodone Lhôte 36 (Méndez Dosuna 2008, 72; Nieto Izquierdo 2017, 113); I.Dodone DVC 17B (Méndez Dosuna 2018b, 287; Johnston 2021, 111, 112; CIOD 15A+16B+17B [last consulted 10/07/2026]).

English Translation

If I do not have?

Spanish Translation

¿Si no tengo?

Commentary

According to Lhôte (I.Dodone Lhôte), this is a summary of Thelytos’ enquiry written by the personnel of the sanctuary in the local alphabet of Dodona. This hypothesis was rightly questioned by Johnston 2021, who, in turn, identified the text as the oracle’s response, although without further explanation (for the vexed question of the responses on the oracular tablets, see Martín González 2021). The different dialect, alphabet, letter forms, and phraseology used in this text, however, indicate that it is an independent enquiry, as argued by the editors of I.Dodone DVC. If their reading is correct, the text consists of a concise question whose object remains unexpressed. The consultation takes the form of a conditional sentence introduced by αἰ (for this formulation in the oracular tablets, see Nieto Izquierdo 2017). On the negative μά for μή, see Méndez Dosuna 2018b, 287.

Ithaca results: Delphi ranks first with a probability of 29.54%, followed by Epirus in second place (14.86%). Chronologically, the highest probability (4.87%) is assigned to the 450-440 BC interval, although the model distributes comparable probabilities across a broad range of dates. See Ithaca results and metadata, and a snapshot of the geographical attribution.

Project: “Dodona Travels to Ithaca. Artificial Intelligence Applied to the Edition of Greek Inscriptions”, NextGenerationEU, Consolidación Investigadora 2023 (CNS2023-144714).

Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International License 4.0. All citation, reuse or distribution of this work must contain a link to the URL https://dodonaonline.com/ and the filename, as well as the date of consultation.

File history: Created on 2026-06-15 by Stavroula Konstantopoulou.

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