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Not Necessarily Written in Stone: On the Alpine, Epigraphic Misadventures of Edm. Blanc, Th. Mommsen, and the Inscription of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus

As reported in the Journal Officiel, Edmond Blanc's discovery of the second-century "Inscription of Domitius" was an historical event in its own right, a "scientific victory" for France in the face of ambitious Prussian scholarship. The problem was, as Theodor Mommsen had suspected, the inscription was a forgery. Focusing on the science of epigraphy, this essay examines the special work of preservation that consists of restoring to evidence the hiatus between monuments and documents, history and its sources. A forged inscription is paradoxically an act of self-promotion and self-effacement. The forger erects a lasting monument to his mastery of the laws governing epigraphy by attending to the misattribution of his own work. Yet Blanc left a clue in his own stated method of interpretation: "I am of the opinion that when an immutable monument such as an inscription comes into our hands, former errors of interpretation, however accredited they might be, must be abandoned if they are contracted by the monument." He believed that history must sooner be corrected according to the inscription than the inscription be read according to history. The attempt here is to retrace the steps by which Blanc's critics trapped him in this misleading interpretive scheme.