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A Roman marble stele image 1
A Roman marble stele image 2
Lot 137*

A Roman marble stele

Antiquities
28 November 2019, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £16,312.50 inc. premium

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A Roman marble stele
Phrygia, dated to 173-174 A.D.
Carved in relief with two female busts, each portrayed with ridged coiffures curled at the tips, wearing pleated tunics with geometric decorated collars, set within an arched niche flanked by fluted columns, the pediment decorated with foliate acroteria, with two rows of symbolic accoutrements beneath including mirrors and spinning implements such as a spindle with whorl and distaff, with three lines of Greek text beneath dedicated to an unnamed deity by Ammia and her two deceased children, Antiochus and Aphion, 129cm high

Footnotes

Provenance:
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 10 July 1990, lot 257.
with Merrin Gallery, New York.
Private collection, USA, acquired from the above in 1990.

For another late 2nd Century Phrygian stele showing a female with an almost identical curl-ended hairstyle and accoutrements including a similar stylised mirror see the Getty Museum, acc. no. 83.AA.204, cf. G. Koch and K. Wight, Roman Funerary Sculpture, Malibu, 1988, pp. 97-99, no. 35. It has been suggested of the Getty stele that the rectangular object similar to the two carved on the present lot represents a comb without teeth, and as such, along with the mirror, suggests that the woman was a well-groomed beauty. Alternatively, it may be that the rectangular implements were used for winding wool and certainly the presence of both mirrors and spinning implements suggests that the women portrayed in the present stele were both beautiful and dutiful, being skilled in domestic chores.

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Bid now on these items

An Anatolian marble idol
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