Title
Funerary stele with two figures (dexiosis)(b)
Content
I.D. no: 21222
Dimensions: Max. H. 37 cm; Max. W. 32 cm; Max. Th. 8 cm.
Material: Rather coarse-grain white marble
Provenance: Unknown, probably imported and eventually donated to the Museum Department in the early decades of the 20th century
Current location: National Museum of Archaeology, Reserve Collection
Condition:
The rectangular slab has two large irregular breakages: an oblique one descending from top-left to right and depriving it of the top part; and a vertical one depriving it of the right side and cutting the right figure in half. A smaller chip on the left frame and another on the front surface of the lower plain frame. Other minor chippings all around. The whole surface of the marble is extensively worn. The back is very rough and covered with random pointed chiselling.
Description:
The fragmented slab shows two draped persons in relief greeting each other by clasping each other’s right hand. The left one, a female, judging by her hairstyle collected in a bun at the back, is preserved in relatively good condition, and is seated on a backless chair (diphros) with cushion and two visible turned legs (the back ones not being visible). Her feet are resting on a low stool. She wears a chiton and himation that covers the whole body except the head. Her hair is drawn back and tied in a knot. She is shown in profile facing right where her right hand is held by the right hand of a standing draped figure facing left. Not enough of the drapery survives to tell whether the latter is male or female but its bare extended right arm suggests a male figure.
The whole scene was, as in the preceding item (I.D. no 21221), originally framed by an arched architectural feature of which only the left pilaster and the lower end of the arch survive the fractures.
Discussion:
Given the close analogy of this fragment with the preceding stele in the type of marble, the architectural framing of the scene, and the dexiosis motif, as well as the serially produced typology, the reader is referred to the comparanda and bibliography of that item (I.D. 21221). Many of the stelae published by Couilloud represent the dexiosis between a seated woman on the left and a standing man on the right,[1] as in this stele, but the women’s heads are almost always veiled. Very few of them are, indeed, shown bare-headed.[2]
The closest example is a stele from Cos, published by G. Susini and dated ‘to the end of Hellenism’, in which, however, the cushion on the diphros is missing while the person on the right is a man.[3]
Although the relief is serially produced, the face and drapery of the dead lady, in spite of their corroded state, betray a certain degree of accuracy in their carving. Whether intended or otherwise, her head seems to escape the anonymity of mass production to qualify as a tentative portrait.
Heavy erosion does not permit the formulation of a proper idea of the original style but the rendering of the drapery suggests a rather cursory work, the product of a lower grade workshop producing such funerary mementos in series.
Unfortunately, the absence of an inscription prevents a narrower date than that normally attributed to this class of funerary monuments, that is, between 167/6 and 69 BC.[4]
Probably 2nd -1st century BC product of a minor workshop.
Bibliography: (previous publications of item): Zammit 1931: 15: in his description of the contents of the ground floor of the old Valletta Museum, he merely states “a few Greek sepulchral slabs stand at the further end of the bench”; Bonanno 1971: 107-09, no 22.
[1] Couilloud 1974: 54, nos 1-21.
[2] See, for example, Couilloud 1974: nos 28, 34, 87, 98, 101.
[3] Susini 1952-1954: 359, fig. 2.
[4] For the discussion around the chronology see Couilloud 1974: 243-53.