Enquiry regarding female offspring Elena Martín González Stavroula Konstantopoulou “Dodona Travels to Ithaca. Artificial Intelligence Applied to the Edition of Greek Inscriptions”. Grant CNS2023-144714, funded by MICIU/AEI (10.13039/501100011033) and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR I.Dodone Online 38A

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 n/a

Lead tablet.

1.6 3.1 0.7

The tablet is inscribed on both sides. The same side also preserves another, older inscription (39A), on top of which the present text is inscribed. One further inscription (40B) is preserved on the opposite side.

Thessalian or Boiotian

Classical

4th century BC

Dodona Dodona, Evangelidis’ excavation 1929-1935. Archaeological Museum of Ioannina inv. Μ69

Encoded according to the EpiDoc Guidelines, version 9.

 English Ancient Greek Latin French German Modern Greek Spanish Question Offspring Facsimile Initial encoding by Stavroula Konstantopoulou.

38A (, 188 n. 334; 40B+38A [last consulted 20/10/2026]).

Cf. , 55 (on cleromancy, with English translation); , 365 (on γίνυμαι for γίγνομαι); , 284 (on γίνυμαι for γίγνομαι).

αἴτε οὐδε μία κόρα μοι γίνυται.
ΓΙΝΥΤΑ tablet γίνυται , based on the reading TINVTA in the facsimile.

Whether I am not going to have a daughter.

Si no voy a tener ninguna hija.

According to Lhôte (), 40B and 38A were inscribed by the same hand and proposes reading them as a single opisthographic consultation. However, in the absence of autopsy or available photographs, this interpretation remains hypothetical.

For enquiries concerning offspring on the Dodona tablets, and especially male offspring, see , 147 and , 184-189, although for this specific case Laes suggests that the consultation concerns the search for a wife rather than the desire to have a daughter.

Ithaca attributes the inscription to Egypt and Nubia with a probability of approximately 74.8%, followed by Italy, including Magna Graecia. Epirus does not appear among the ten most probable regions, while Thessaly receives a probability of less than 1%. The chronological prediction peaks at 120-110 BCE, with a mean date of 109 BCE. See the Ithaca results and associated files.