Gravestone of Tryphe in the Princeton University Art Museum, August 2009

Gravestone of Tryphe
Greek, Hellenistic, ca. 150-100 BC
From Seleuceia in Pieria, Turkey
Marble

# Y1992-48

The deceased woman is identified in the Greek inscription as Tryphe, the daughter (or wife) of Egias, followed by the standard phrase, "Farewell, you (who are now) without pain." Tryphe is seated with crossed legs on a folding stool with a comfortable cushion, propping herself on her left arm and resting her chin in her right hand. Her pose echoes that of the Tyche of Antioch, a famous sculpture of the early third century BC by the artist Eutychides. Tyche was the divine personification of "Luck" or "Fortune," or in this case of the city of Antioch, a few miles up the Orontes River from Seleuceia, where this gravestone was found by Princeton archaeologists in the 1930s.

Text from the Princeton University Art Museum label.