Inscribed Spherical Agate Gemstone from the Anapa Region Revisited.

The paper focuses on one very unusual magical object originating from the territory of the Bosporan kingdom: an agate stone amulet with a rather extensive inscription found in the vicinity of ancient Gorgippia. The author summarizes the history of scholarly discussion on the subject and analyses Chr. Faraone's "magical handbook" hypothesis putting forward some arguments against it. The paper not only revisits the reading of the text, but treats the artefact as a unity of the material object and the inscription there upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]