Tomb bust plaques in ancient Greece

 Plaques in the form of a bust were sometimes placed in tombs of women in ancient Greece as token representations of ideal and perpetual maidenhood.  The female is sometimes depicted wearing a crown (polos) possibly alluding to tragic virgins of myth such as Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter who became the queen of the underworld through her abduction by Hades, the god of the underworld.  Persephone and her mother Demeter were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which promised the initiated a more enjoyable prospect after death.


Image: Painted Terracotta Tomb plaque made in Boeotia about 420-390 BCE that I photographed at the British Museum in 2016.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part 2 of the 4th 30 minute segment of the "Pompeii Virtual Walk" video

Image
This segment of the Pompeii Virtual Walk video includes the House of the Faun, House of the Vetti (note - explicit frescoes - viewer discretion advised), the House of the Prince of Naples, the Castellum Aquae, and Samnite fortification wall and tower near the necropolis of the Vesuvio Gate. I was particularly thrilled to explore the House of the Vetti as it was closed when I was in Pompeii and it is one of those dwellings where the owners went rather "over the top" in adorning almost every inch of wall space with frescoes even though many scholars think the Vettii were freedman and not aristocrats at all.  I was also excited to finally "tour" the House of the Prince of Naples that I studied for months before writing the Wikipedia article about it. Surgical instruments were scattered in the debris of the house and a skeleton was found in the barrel-vaulted cubiculum to the left of the fauces. I thought these finds suggested the house may have been occupied by a physi...
Read more

Jade Death Mask of Pakal the Great and other Mayan Treasures, ongoing, at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City

Image
Jade Death Mask of Pakal the Great and other Mayan Treasures, ongoing, at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.  When the jade death mask of Mayan King, Pakal the Great, was discovered in 1952 during an excavation of the Temple of Inscriptions in the ruined Mayan city of Palenque (modern-day Mexico), this intricate jade death mask had been lying in a darkened tomb chamber for over a thousand years, covering a skull. Inscriptions on the walls indicated that the skull belonged to none other than the Mayan king K’inich Janaab’ Pakal, known today as Pakal the Great.  This mask along with a replica of the great king's tomb are one of the highlights of the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The museum's collections include the Stone of the Sun, giant stone heads of the Olmec civilization that were found in the jungles of Tabasco and Veracruz, and treasures recovered from the Mayan civilization at the Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza. Image: Funerary ...
Read more

Roman military belts: Symbols of social status and Auctoritas

Image
While browsing the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, I saw this fragmentary figurine of a Roman soldier from the 3rd century CE found in Naukratis, Egypt by legendary archaeologist Flinders Petrie.  Looking at it I noticed the knotted sash just above the waist and realized this is not just any soldier but a senior officer. The plated military balteus was not worn with a muscled cuirass.  Instead senior officers wore a fabric belt or sash with fringed ends, a traditional distinction of command worn since the Hellenistic period. The balteus, also known as the cingulum militare from the 3rd century CE onwards, worn by all legionaries, was often elaborate, too, though.   "The narrator of Apuleius’ satirical novel ‘The Golden Ass’ describes a man as being recognisably “miles elegione” (a soldier and legionary) and he also tells us how he recognized this: Through his “habitus atque habitude” (dress and manner)," points out archaeologist Stefanie Hoss.  "T...
Read more