The tombstone evokes the shape of a lekythos, the perfume bottle customary in Athenian funerary cult. The seated man and the woman before him hold hands, indicating their togetherness even after death.
This was not the first phase of carving the relief: details show that the original scene depicted a seated woman and a handmaid in front of her. The stele was thus recarved and reused already in antiquity.
There are some letters above the head of the woman: fragments of the name of the deceased. We do not know which figure it originally belonged to.
Marble analyses conducted by Danielle Decrouez (Geneva, Museum of Natural History) and Karl Ramseyer (University of Bern, Institute of Geological Sciences) have shown that the funerary vas was made of Pentelic marble. Click here for the detailed results.
