Minneapolis Institute of Art

Grave Stele

Greece

Date

5th century BCE

Medium

Pentellic marble

Culture

Ancient Greek

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

This gravestone, or stele, came from a street of tombs known as the Kerameikos, which lies immediately outside the walls of Athens. The inscription identifies the man as Philomelos and the woman as Plathane. Unlike the funereal art of many other civilizations, Greek monuments emphasized life rather than death—the memory of the dead in the minds of the living. Carved in low relief, the couple is shown either in the act of departing from one another in this world or greeting one another in the next, united forever in death by the affectionate gesture of their touching hands. Ancient Greek, Greece, Europe

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