A Hellenistic Marble Funerary Stele for Matrodoros and Menousa, Asia Minor, 2nd half of the 2nd Century B.C.

VAT reduced rateUK: Greenford Park Warehouse

Lot Closed

July 6, 01:01 PM GMT

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Property from a European Private Collection

A Hellenistic Marble Funerary Stele for Matrodoros and Menousa, Asia Minor

2nd half of the 2nd Century B.C.

of slightly tapering pedimented form, carved within a rectangular recess with a man reclining on a kline and holding a skyphos, a veiled woman seated on a chair, a table laden with victuals, and a servant on either side, three lines of Greek inscription engraved below and reading ΜΑΤΡΟΔΩΡΟΣ ΜΑΤΡΟΔΩΡΟΥ /ΛΑΜΠΑΔΙΟΚΟΠΟΣ / ΜΕΝΟΥΣΑ ΜΑΤΡΟΔΩΡΟΥ ("Matrodoros, son of Matrodoros, lampmaker. Menousa, daughter of Matrodoros") above a bundle of myrtle.

77 by 37 by 8 cm.

Coins and Antiquities, London, 1973

Sotheby’s, London, July 15th, 1980, no. 204, illus.

Galerie Archeologia, Brussels

acquired from the above in 1981

Published

Coins and Antiquities, London, Catalogue no. 5, September 1973, no. 440, illus.

Ernst Pfuhl and Hans Möbius, Die ostgriechische Grabreliefs, vol. 2, Mainz, 1979, p. 398, no. 1627, pl. 238

Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, vol. 29, 1979, no. 1679

Marielouise Cremer, Hellenistisch-römische Grabstelen im nordwestlichen Kleinasien, vol. 1: Mysien, Bonn, 1991, pp. 33-37 and 126, cat. KN 1

Stefan Schmidt, Hellenistische Grabreliefs, typologische und chronologische Beobachtungen, Cologne, 1991, pl. IV

Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, vol. 41, 1991, no. 1078

Sandra Karlsson, Emotions Carved in Stone? The Social Handling of Death as expressed on Hellenistic Grave Stelai from Smyrna and Kyzikos, doct. diss., Gothenburg, 2014, p. 136-137, cat. K56, pl. 36.1

For a related example see http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/item/objekt/176181.

The representation of a bakchos (bundle of myrtle) indicates that the deceased had been initiated in the Eleusinian Mysteries (see Cremer 1991, pp. 33-35).