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Museum of Classical Archaeology Databases

Sabouroff Grave Stele

A funeral relief of a deceased man and woman. This is an example of a type of grave monument called Hero Reliefs commonly found in Lakonia, the area which includes Sparta.

The couple are portrayed with attributes normally associated with gods: the chair, the snake, the pomegranate, the tiny worshippers with offerings. It is only because this relief was found on a burial mound in what was clearly a cemetery that we know it is a funerary monument and not a representation of the gods. The deification of the dead in depictions like this gives us some clue about the religious attitudes to death in that part of Greece at that time

Number: 
30
Material: 
Blue Lakonian marble
Location of Original: 

Berlin A12

Size: 
0.87m
Accession: 

Purchased 9 Oct 1880 (?)

References: 

Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 31 (n.12)
Blümel: Griechische Skulpturen des VI & V Jahrhunderts (1940), 11, A12
Karo: Personality in Greek Archaic Art, 159
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 9, no.12
Stewart: Greek Sculpture, 127, pl. 181

Date: 
Second half of C6 BCE
Provenance: 

Found at Chrysapha near Sparta

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