Family Stele Unearthed near the Sacred Way

News November 19, 2014

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(J. Stroszeck, German Archaeological Institute)

ATHENS, GREECE—According to The Greek Reporter, part of a carved marble grave stele dating to 400 B.C. was unearthed in the Kerameikos area of Athens by a team of scientists from the German Archaeological Institute at Athens and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Athens. The figures on the stone, which is carved with the name “Dimostratos,” depict a woman sitting with a girl and another woman with a bearded man in the background. Scholars think the stele may have originally been placed in the ancient cemetery of Kerameikos near the Sacred Gate, but was reused later as a door sill and then as a sewer cover under the Sacred Way in the sixth century A.D. To read about an eighth-century B.C. funerary stele unearthed in Turkey, see "Kuttamuwa's Soul."

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