AIUK46 no. 82 Grave stele of Laodike

Grave stele of Laodike

AIUK 4.6 (BM, Funerary Monuments) no. 82 Date: late ii BC?

. . . traces? . . . (relief) Laodike (daughter) of Herakleides (of) . . . worthy (chrēstē). Farewell!^[1]

Greek text

References:

AIUK 4.6 (BM, Funerary Monuments) no. 82 (Translated text) (AIUK) (AIO)

BM Sculpture 706

Translation by: Robert Pitt

AIO Images: 1 2

Monument type: Stele

Inscription type: Funerary

Findspot: Rheneia? (BM 1849,1201.37)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] This relief stele in the British Museum has no provenance but was purchased in 1849 from the sale of Thomas Blayds’ collection. It depicts a standing male clasping the hand of a woman (dexiosis, cf. no. 26) who sits on a draped stool and wears her mantle pulled back over her head. The inscription below is almost entirely worn away, leaving only the more deeply incised ends of letter strokes (serifs). The smooth area above the relief may also contain faint traces of letters either worn away or erased, suggesting at least one period of reuse. The name Laodike is clear and her patronymic should be restored as Herakleides. The second line should then include an ethnic and likely ends with "useful, worthy" (chreste), while the third line gives the typical gesture of farewell.

Although placed among the Attic stelai in the records of the British Museum, the stone is almost certainly from the island of Rheneia, where a great many funerary monuments of the residents of Delos have been discovered. The form of the stele, the sculpture and inscribed formulae all have close parallels among the corpus from Rheneia, where the majority of stelai are from the late second century BC, following a growth in the Delian population after it was declared to be a free port by the Romans in 166 BC. A remarkable number of these stones were removed from the island as ballast or collectibles by a great many travellers and merchants up to the 19^th century. For more detailed discussion of the inscription see AIUK 4.6 (BM, Funerary Monuments), no. 82.

Added: 6 Apr 2022
Updated: 6 Apr 2022
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