Antiquities Exhibits

During the Ptolemaic period a distinctive type of subterranean tomb for multiple burials proliferated in the cemeteries around the city of Alexandria. Underground chambers cut into the living rock radiated from a central courtyard open to the sky. Most chambers contained a number of loculi, long narrow niches cut into the walls, which served as burial slots. Some loculi were sealed with painted limestone slabs in the form of small shrines. - Metropolitan Museum of Art Roman columbaria were often built partly or completely underground as well. Most columbaria were managed by funeral societies and used by the lower and middle-classes. Niches could be quite simple or elaborately decorated with inscriptions, paintings, and mosaics depending on each family's economic means.   The Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas is a 1st-century CE Roman columbarium, situated near the Porta Latina on the Via Appia, Rome, Italy. It was discovered and excavated in 1831 by Pietro Campana. Though its nam...

The Phoenicians as a politically, religiously, and perhaps even ethnically distinct entity on the Levantine coast emerged at the end of the Late Bronze Age about 1200 BCE, as one of the successor cultures to the Canaanites.  From their homeland on the coast of the Levant, the Phoenicians spread throughout the Mediterranean and its islands including Cyprus, Sicily and Malta. Some scholars have observed that Iron Age Phoenicia was not a nation, but rather a collection of cities built around natural harbors along the coast. While they shared a common culture, these small states remained independent, competing with each other in the international marketplace.  "Depending on how evidence is weighed [based on Ugaritic texts and classical sources], Phoenician religion might be presented on the one hand as inclusive and diverse – a “conservatively” polytheistic society easily able to incorporate or syncretize new deities, customs and traditions or on the other hand as highly place-spe...