Potaissa Sphinx statue explained

The Potaissa Sphinx statue is a 3rd-century bronze statue from Potaissa in the former province of Dacia. The sphinx sculpture itself bears striking parallels with the famous Naxos sphinx from 560 BC, which is now in the Delphi Archaeological Museum.

Statue history

In February 1847, a German archaeological magazine published the statue for the first time and its inscription, as well as a drawing of the statue. According to the report at the time, the find was discovered during an excavation near Turda.^[1]

German archaeologists judged the statue's inscription to be authentic, and many tried to decipher it, but no one succeeded.

The statue found its place in the private collection of the archaeologist Count József Kemény, who led the excavation.

After the German presentation, János Érdy-Luczenbacher requested the statue from József Kemény's collection and presented it to the professors of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, as well as to Croatian, German and Austrian archaeologists and historians.

The statue was then returned to Kemény József's collection, where it is stolen along with many other works of art during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848/49.

Inscription

At the end of December 2003, Dr. Péter Révész, professor of informatics and honorary professor of classical philology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, published his study in which he successfully deciphered that the text on the statue is an archaic Hungarian text written in special Greek letters. With this, the statue became the oldest written language memory in Hungarian. The interpretation of the text has been confirmed by several other experts and is now accepted. Most recently, it was published by the journal Mediterranean Archeology and Archaeometry.^[2]

After the decipherment, however, some experts called the statue a fake.

Authenticity

Arguments against its authenticity

• One of the few contemporary records of the statue was found in the archives of József Kemény, whose early career involved a document falsification scandal. According to some opinions, the statue never existed, and only József Kemény invented the whole thing.
• József Kemény never presented the statue to the general public, as he claimed that his mansion was robbed during the revolution.

Arguments for its authenticity

• The type of Greek letters on the statue were only discovered nearly 50 years after the discovery of the statue. So, Kemény could not have known about such letters and could not have used them in a forgery.
• Contemporary Roman sources mention a sphinx statue erected in the Isis temple in the settlement.
• The statue was presented at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and examined by several Austrian, Hungarian, Croatian and German historians.
• The Hungarian text written in Greek letters only contains words that could already exist in the Hungarian in the third century, while it does not contain words that the Hungarians took from other languages only later. However, in József's time, these linguistic theories had not yet been developed, on the basis of which a possible forger would have been able to choose and use only authentic words.
• A German archaeological newspaper published an accurate drawing of the statue and the inscription on it in 1847, before József Kemény.
• In a letter addressed to a confidential friend of his time, József Kemény reports that his mansion was really looted during the revolution.
• At the beginning of his career, József forged only one document, but his later works are all authentic, and therefore he was a member of many scientific institutions. He never faked artifacts, but he did collect them.

So, if Kemény József did indeed forge the statue, he should have been 50 years ahead of the Greek Archaeological Society and the German and British archaeologists in Dipylon and should have discovered the Greek writing type, well before they did, which is on the statue. He should also have found Roman records of the sphinx nearly 100 years earlier than the other historians. He would also have had a nearly 50-year head start over the Finnish, Hungarian, Austrian, and German linguists in Hungarian language research, so that he could forge only those words on the statue that were truly authentic. Then, in an incredibly strange way, he should have been disinterested in the sculpture, since he never deciphered its writing, and never profited from it scientifically. Then his previous vast research should be destroyed so that it is not later found in his archives, which have now been completely overlooked.

Notes and References

1. Book: Darai, Lajos . Mégis volt szfinx, és mégis magyar... . Hungarian.
2. Dr. Révész . Péter . 2023 . Inscription on a Naxian-Style Sphinx Statue From Potaissa Deciphered as a Poem in Dactylic Meter . Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry.