Saturday 1 February 2020, at 18.00 at the National Archaeological Museum of Siritide, in Policoro [Mt], the exhibition The Tables of Eraclea will be inaugurated. Between Taranto and Rome conceived and organized by the Basilicata Museum Complex in collaboration with the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and the National Archaeological Museum of Taranto, the Superintendence of Archeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Basilicata, and promoted together with the Municipality of Policoro.

The exhibition - which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Siritide Museum - revolves around an extraordinary loan: the Tables of Eraclea, found in 1732 near the Cavone river and preserved at the MANN, considered among the most important epigraphic documents of the Magna Greece.

The exhibition - set up in the new wing of the Museum - is directed by Marta Ragozzino and curated by Stéphane Verger, Savino Gallo with Dimitris Roubis and Gabriel Zuchtriegel. The exhibition design is by Vittoria Grifone / Stalkagency, the graphic design by Mauro Bubbico.

Speakers will be Marta Ragozzino, Director of the Basilicata Museum Complex; Paolo Giulierini, Director of the MANN; Eva Degl'Innocenti, Director of the MArTA; Salvatore Bonomo, ABAP Superintendent of Basilicata; the Mayor of Policoro Enrico Mascia and the curators of the exhibition.

The two bronze plates constitute the most important written document of Magna Graecia. Engraved on both sides, in Greek and Latin, they allow us to reconstruct the transformations of the city of Herakleia from its foundation by Taranto at the end of the 5th century BC to the acquisition of the status of a Roman municipality, attributed to the city, now Eraclea, in the first half of the 1st BC

The Greek inscription is a regulation for the management of the land dedicated to Dionysus and Athena and for their redistribution for production purposes; the Latin one is a compendium of municipal laws of the late Republican age.

The Tables are a fundamental document for understanding the social, political and economic history of the Siritide area.

The exhibition aims to intertwine the long classic tradition of exegesis of the Tables with the results of archaeological investigations from the discovery of the famous Tomb of the Painter of Policoro in 1963 to the excavations and reconnaissance still in progress in the city and in the territory.

At the same time, the exhibition is the starting point to evoke the most recent phenomenon of the Land Reform of the 1950s - in many respects close to the dynamics that transpire from the Tables - placing it in parallel with the concomitant start of archaeological explorations in the area. , thanks to the far-sighted action of Dinu Adamesteanu, first superintendent archaeologist of Basilicata and founder of the Siritide Museum.