AIUK46 no. 18 Grave stele of a woman

Grave stele of a woman

AIUK 4.6 (BM, Funerary Monuments) no. 18 Date: late iv BC?

[- - (daughter) of ?Ach]illeus - - (relief)^[1]

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Greek text

References:

AIUK 4.6 (BM, Funerary Monuments) no. 18 (Translated text) (AIUK) (AIO)

GIBM IV 941

Clairmont, CAT 2.786

SEMA 3193

Translation by: Robert Pitt

AIO Images: 1 2

Monument type: Stele

Inscription type: Funerary

Findspot: Athens (BM 1894,0616.1)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] This stele was discovered ca. 1870 in the wine-cellar of Alphington House on the island of Jersey, at that point owned by Arthur Sanders. He donated the stele to the British Museum in 1894. There is no record of how it got to Jersey, but perhaps it was brought back by traders to the Mediterranean, following a long tradition of ancient stones being loaded as ballast.

The relief depicts a woman, her head inclined mournfully downwards, dressed in a chiton with a himation pulled across the back of her head and seated on a stool; she holds an open box on her lap, perhaps for jewellery. A young woman, perhaps a relative or servant, stands before her holding an infant, suggesting the deceased died in childbirth. Compared to the high quality of the sculpture, the inscription is poorly carved, and is almost certainly from a later reuse of the monument in the later fourth or third centuries BC. This final part of the inscription should form the end of a demotic or ethnic of the dead woman’s father or husband, but the remains prove difficult to resolve as such. More likely, we have part of the patronymic Achilleus in the genitive. For more detailed discussion of the inscription see AIUK 4.6 (BM, Funerary Monuments), no. 18.

Added: 6 Apr 2022
Updated: 6 Apr 2022
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