The President of the Greek Parliament congratulated the Ministry of Culture and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Ioannina on the inclusion of Dodoni’s useful plates in the UNESCO List.

“The Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Ioannina deserve only congratulations, and really warm ones, for their great recent success in having Dodoni’s lead signs (useful sheets of thin lead sheets) included in the UNESCO Memory. World» List. These are cuts of fragile lead sheets on which the pilgrims’ questions to the oracle were engraved, as well as the information they received.. A total of 4,216 inscriptions have been identified and published, dated from the letter to the late 16th century BC. until the middle of the 2nd century BC

The registration of the Dodoni Signs on the UNESCO Memory of the World List, a program designed to preserve humanity’s most important written monuments from oblivion, is expected to bring multiple benefits to this unique archaeological group through its worldwide visibility within an international organization.

The Ephorate of Antiquities of Ioannina, the General Directorate of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage and the Directorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities of the Ministry of Culture have worked with admirable and commendable diligence to achieve this success. The nomination file was sent to UNESCO in November 2021 in cooperation with the Greek National Committee of UNESCO.

Since then, it has passed the necessary stages of evaluation provided by the program, and, finally, the plates were included in the Register by a decision taken in the context of the 216th session of the Executive Board of UNESCO. A summary presentation of Dodoni’s sheet metal tools has already been posted along with the rest of the new entries in the Catalog on the corresponding program website.

There were many supporters of the successful request, I highlight the region of Epirus and the governor of the region, Mr. Al. Kahrimanis, local community of Dodoni, its municipality and mayor, Mr. Chr. Dakaletsis, late Mayor Ioannito, M. Elisaf, late President of the Acropolis Museum, Professor D. Pantermali, PED of Epirus, Ancient Dodoni Spiritual Movement, as well as prominent Greek and foreign scientists.

Homer in Odyssey reveals to us that Odysseus, before returning to Ithaca, came to Dodoni “from the tall oak tree Zeus volun epakousai” in order to get from Zeus a guess about how he should return to his homeland “amphadon or cipelidun?”, openly or secretly, that is. The rest is known. So today we also “widely”, openly and publicly, that is, congratulate the state bodies and individuals who contributed and supported this great recognition and promotion of Dodona, which gives us reason to hope that the same success will be marked by the corresponding registrations of Nikopolis. and Zagori.