Death is a “fixed event” in everyone’s lives, past and present. A lot can be told from the lives of the Ancient people by looking at their dead. In the “Twenty Objects” series, we looked at a couple of objects associated with death such as the Hagia Traida sarcophagus, the tombstone of Longinus Sdapeze and the Coin of Brutus. Each of these objects has a different story behind it but they are all connected through death. In this presentation I will discuss each of these objects which are linked through the macabre theme of death.
The Hagia Triada sarcophagus is a late Bronze Age limestone sarcophagus. Its original date was 1400 BC and was rediscovered in Hagia Triada on Crete in 1903. It gives us the most comprehensive iconography of a pre-Homeric thysiastikis ceremony and one of the best pieces of information on noble burial customs when Crete was under Mycenaean rule. The sarcophagus is on display in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, one of the most important archaeological museums, in Greece.
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It is the only limestone sarcophagus of its era discovered to date and the only sarcophagus with a series of narrative scenes of Minoan funerary ritual. It was originally used for the burial of a prince, therefore signifying its noble origins. The painted frieze around the sarcophagus shows the stages of the sacred ceremony which was performed at the burial of important personages. In the centre of one side of the sarcophagus is a scene with bull sacrifice, a common scene in burial