Grave Stele

Greece

5th century BCE

Pentellic marble

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. Gallery Not on View The Ethel Morrison Van Derlip Fund