The fragment has part of a double lotus with five (?) leaves arching over a large seven-petalled palmette between two Ionic volutes (only the l. preserved). A smaller downward-pointed palmette has five petals. The floral decoration is on a straight face, ending in a smoothed inward cut. Below it, there survives a bit of dart on the l., then a large full egg, possibly as wide and high as the anthemion part. The piece is either from a small building or from an unusual stele and is archaic Lydian.

Pieces Cat. 51 (Fig. 161) and Cat. 52 are fragments of delightful architectural Ionic anthemia and evoke the same range of comparisons. With its antithetic palmettes, concave volutes, added leaves within the lotus, and large, simple egg and dart, Cat. 52 seems somewhat more developed than the Rhoikos altar ornaments (E. Buschor, AthMitt 58 (1933), 185ff., figs. 11f., 17f., Beil 55:4) and the Didymaion anthemion (Gruben, Didymaion, 134f., fig. 26)though closer to the latter. The sima of the Siphnian treasury, too, may be earlier (la Coste-Messelière, Delphes, pls. 92f.). Its spirit of late archaic delicacy, though not the exact form, appears in the stele of Diagores (Buschor, Grabstelen, 33f., Beil. 11 [IV:1]) and other Samian stelai (Beil. 12 [IV:4]) of Buschor’s Polycratean anthemia group (530-520? B.C.); and the Attic manifestations are on such terracotta simae as Buschor Tondächer, 20ff., pls. 1-3, nos. X-XXIII, 510-500 B.C.

”Local” large-grained marble, reddish weathering.

Top ancient; l. side sawed of anciently; r. side, bottom, and back broken.