Headless statues of a dead woman and her servant were found in an ancient Greek cemetery.
The Ministry of Culture and Sport has announced to Greece that the two statues, dating from the fourth century BC, are fragments of a white marble monument unveiled before the construction of a town hall in Paiania, east of Athens. in a statement Sunday (January 24).
The images depict the dead woman sitting in an ornate chair while her servant, also a woman, is standing, the statement reads. The monument would have marked the grave of the unknown seated woman.
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The marble tomb monument is typical of tomb markers from the fourth century BC, with similar examples in the Holy Temple of Agia Paraskevi in Markopoulo Mesogaias and the cemetery of Kerameikos in Athens, according to the statement.
Typical tombstones of the time depicted family gatherings or dead masters and mistresses with their slaves, while tombstones of children accompanied them through their pets, Olga Palagia, a professor of classical archeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, wrote in “A company for Greek architecture“(John Wiley & Sons, 2016).
The statement from the ministry does not explain why these statues show the women without their heads, but the ancient monument was found in fragments. Tomb monuments, according to Palagia, typically depicted idealized faces so that they would not be accurate portraits.
Luxury tomb monuments such as these were banned in 317 BC by the then governor of Athens, Demetrios of Phaleron, who according to the statement helps to date the monument up to before this period.
The monument was taken to the Greek Archaeological Museum of Brauron for maintenance and preservation.
Originally published on Live Science.