Beautifully detailed Greek funerary banquet relief at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia

Beautifully detailed Greek funerary banquet relief at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia.
The afterlife as a banquet, as depicted here, was a popular image in fourth-third century grave-reliefs. The iconography, borrowed in archaic times from the ancient Near East, was based on everyday symposia.
Generic elements in this relief include the deceased, represented as a banqueter (symposiast), who holds out a libation bowl (phiale). His wife sits at the foot of his couch. In front of the couch is a table on which food (perhaps fruit or cakes) has been placed. At left, a serving boy stands beside a volute-krater holding a jug and drinking vessel with long conical body and ram's head end (rhyton). The krater is depicted on a stand, indicating that the artist intended it to be understood as metal. The startling horse's head above the serving boy may have aristocratic associations (horse-breeding and racing was the preserve only of the wealthy); it may also allude to the god of the Underworld, Hades, one of whose cult epithets was hippios (horseman).


Image: 4th century BCE funerary banquet relief, Greek, courtesy of the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia.

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