burial-chest
- Museum number
- 1805,0703.163
- Description
-
Marble sepulchral chest of Isochryses, with a modern lid
- Production date
- 1stC-2ndC
- Dimensions
-
Height: 35.56 centimetres
-
Width: 24.13 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Cook 2013, nr. 74:
‘A cinerary urn seventeen inches high, formerly in the villa Mattei. upon the front in the highest part are two Ram’s heads from whence hangs a festoon of laurel surrounding a tablet and a head of Medusa; two sparrows under the festoon are pecking at it; in the tablet ye following inscription.
DIS•MANIBVS•
ISOCHRYSI
V•A•XXIIII•
IVNIA•
LAIS•
SER•
BENE•
MERENTI•’ (TY 12/3, street drawing room 19)
Smith identified the birds as ravens. The urn is said to be from the Mattei collection also in TY 10/3, GR 1, ST 2, TY 12/4 and GR 2. Smith rightly comments that there is no record of this urn having been seen in the Mattei collection. For an explanation, see curatorial comments with 1805.7-3.166 (= Sculpture 2367).
Bought from Jenkins in 1773, the price given as £5 in ST 1 (fo. 16r) and as £6 in TY 10/7, TY 12/1, TY 10/5, and TY 10/3 (fo. 23).
Drawings:
Townley drawings 2010,5006.240 and 293, the latter signed ‘G. Kirtland Del 1795’.
Date:
1st quarter II AD (Sinn).
Bibliography:
- Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum (1808) V.40.
- Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, V, pl. 11, fig. 4.
- A. H. Smith, A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, Vol. III (London 1904), 352, no. 2366.
- Friederike Sinn, Stadrömische Marmorurnen (Mainz am Rhein 1987), 212, no. 501.
- CIL VI.19723.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1805
- Department
- Greek and Roman
- Registration number
- 1805,0703.163
