Marble Lid of a Cinerary Chest in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 2009

Marble Lid of a Cinerary Chest
Roman, late 1st century AD

Accession # 1997.271

The lid is fashioned to look like the roof of a barrel-vaulted building with acroteria at the corners in the form of theatrical masks and palmettes. The front panel is inscribed in Latin: "To the spirits of the dead [of] Sextus Flavius Pancarpus, who lived 67 years." Despite the fact that the inscription mentions only a man, the lunettes at the sides show show both male (globe and box of scrolls) and female (mirror and spindle) attributes, indicating that the chest also may have contained the remains of Pancarpus' wife.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.