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Marble votive stele showing Artemis and Cybele. (Courtesy of the Vedat Nedim Tör Museum, Istanbul)
Marble Votive Stele Showing Artemis and Cybele
The Lydians and their World
(2010)
Cat. 35
- Date
- Ca. 400 BC, Late Lydian (Persian)
- Museum
- Manisa, Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum, 3937
- Museum Inventory No.
- 3937
- Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
- S68.006
- Material
- Marble, Stone
- Object Type
- Sculpture
- Sculpture Type
- Stele, Relief, Human Figure
- Site
- Sardis
- Sector
- Syn
- Trench
- Syn FC 68
- Locus
- Syn FC Spolia
- B-Grid Coordinates
- E110.68 - E111.39 / N5.91 - N6.53 *96.51
- Description
- White marble. Rectangular stele missing top. Raised borders representing the steps, antae, and pediment of a temple or naiskos frame, four figures in relief. Occupying more than two-thirds of the framed space at left and center are two female figures: standing, frontal, draped in long chiton and cloak, wearing poloi. The taller one at left holds a deer; the central one holds a lion. At right and facing them are two profile figures facing left, one in front of the other, the further figure taller and male, the hither figure female, both with raised right forearms, horizontal left forearms. In the space above the two profile figures, a flat oval object. Height 0.99 m, width 0.667 m, thickness at bottom 0.29 m.
- Comments
- Recovered in the Late Roman Synagogue at Sardis, where it had been reused as building material. Like No. 34, it presumably was made to be a votive offering for the sanctuary of Cybele at Sardis. The figure with the deer is Artemis, the figure with the lion Cybele, the oval object Cybele’s tympanum.
- See Also
- Greenewalt, “Gods of Lydia”; Cahill, “City of Sardis”. See also: R2 Cat. 20
- Bibliography
- Hanfmann and Ramage 1978, 58-60, no. 20; Dedeoğlu 2003, 45, fig.
- Author
- CHG