Grave Reliefs

Abstract: In early 1934 the distinguished collector and connoisseur Michael P. Vlastos, founder and first president of the Society of the Friends of the National Archaeological Museum, purchased from an art dealer in Athens a pair of white ground lekythoi, said to have been found in a tomb illicitly excavated in Gouva, i.e. in the modern Athenian neighbourhood of Pangrati, approximately on the location of the ancient attic demos of Agryle. A few years later, in 1942, Sir J.D. Beazley, Vlastos’ close friend, listed the two lekythoi, now exhibited at the M.P. Vlastos Collection in the National Archaeological Museum, in the oeuvre of his Sabouroff Painter, stating that with them a third white ground lekythos by the same painter was found in the same grave. This third lekythos was left
unsold in the Athenian Art Market, and since the 1930’s considered to be of unknown whereabouts. With the aid of the collector’s archive it has been possible to prove that the third lost lekythos is no other than the white ground lekythos inv. no. 51.11.4 of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, acquired in 1951 at the New York Art Market. Thus, at least a
part of the original grave context is now reconstructed.
All three vases depict the same subject; the tomb of a young warrior is visited by a woman. It seems reasonable to suppose that one iconographical “program” unites the three lekythoi, since the warrior is represented in three successive conditions, each on a single lekythos; as an ephebe/peripolos, then as an adult citizen/hoplite receiving his helmet and, finally, as deceased, sitting isolated from the living, on a rock, probably the so-called “White Rock”, immediately inside the Gates of the Underworld, with his weapons lying emblematically unserviceable on the ground.

The existing material indicates that a continuous production of grave reliefs with images of human beings had been established in Cyprus from the Archaic up to the Roman period. Cypriote sculpture developed through the centuries its own tradition, whereby strong foreign influences from near places were uninterruptedly assimilated to the local character. In the course of this process, elements from Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt etc. as well as Ptolemaic and later on Roman portrait features were adopted.

The banquet scene is a widespread picture type having a long and continuous tradition in Cypriot funerary art, particularly on grave reliefs, which were produced from the beginning of the 5th century B.C. until the 1st century A.D. The Cypriots belonged to the first who introduced the motif in the funerary context.

In this work one hundred twenty-four securely classified grave reliefs mainly figural representations from Cyprus from the Archaic to the Roman period were examined. Plain inscribed grave stelae or aniconic cippi were not included. Despite the relatively small number of grave reliefs found, a large variety of stelae forms, figural scenes and motifs is revealed, demonstrating the fusion of diverse influences from neighbouring cultures with the unique local character thus requiring an independent approach was to study these grave reliefs.

The present work is the slightly revised version of my dissertation, which was accepted in summer 2002 by the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg, Germany.

In this work one hundred twenty-four securely classified grave reliefs mainly figural representations from Cyprus from the Archaic to the Roman period were examined. Plain inscribed grave stelae or aniconic cippi were not included. Despite the relatively small number of grave reliefs found, a large variety of stelae forms, figural scenes and motifs is revealed, demonstrating the fusion of diverse influences from neighbouring cultures with the unique local character thus requiring an independent approach was to study these grave reliefs. The present work is the slightly revised version of my dissertation, which was accepted in summer 2002 by the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg, Germany.