Research Associates Paweł Nowakowski and Efthymis Rizos spent the week 26th February – 4th March in Athens. The aim of this research journey was the examination of a database of late antique Greek inscriptions, maintained at the Faculty of History and Archaeology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The ‘Saints’ were hosted there by Professor Katerina Nikolaou.

The Athenian database comprises more than 120,000 records ranging from the 4th c. to the modern period, and covers all the epigraphic editorial series up to the early 1990s. It originated as a set of paper files (which we were also allowed to examine), later converted to FileMaker format. It allowed us to get a number of entries for mainland Greece and the Balkans, as well as proved the completion of our evidence from already processed regions.

Another task was the examination of Egyptian clay lamps from the Benaki Musuem with the kind assistance of Anastasia Drandaki. This collection owes its unique appearance to the fact that most of the lamps are inscribed with names of saints, many of them of Anatolian hagiographic background and bearing very sophisticated, rare names. It is a real mystery how those obscure figures found their way to the Egyptian countryside. Perhaps the efforts of Paweł and Efthymis will let us solve this puzzle.