A Syrian Basalt Funerary Relief, circa 2nd Century A.D.

of rectangular form, carved in relief with two busts side by side, the man at left wearing a tunic and toga and holding a scroll in his left hand, his hair swept up above the forehead in thick coma-shaped locks, the man at right wearing a tunic, cuirass, and mantle fastened with a circular brooch on his right shoulder, his hair arranged in rows of crescentic curls, their faces each with slightly parted lips, long nose, and large eyes.

reportedly from Qanawat of the Decapolis in southern Syria
French Archaeological Mission to the Djebel Druze, État du Djebel Druze, Syria (French Mandate), 1925
acquired by the present owner in Palestine (British Mandate) in the 1940s

Maurice Dunand, Mission archéologique au Djebel druze. Le Musée de Soueïda. Inscriptions et monuments figurés (Haut Commissariat de la République Française en Syrie et au Liban. Service des Antiquités. Bibliothèque archéologique et historique, vol. XX), Paris, 1934, p. 53, no. 85, pl. XXIV
Klaus Parlasca, Syrische Grabreliefs hellenistischer und römischer Zeit, Mainz am Rhein, 1982, p. 19, n. 190 (p.30)

For related examples see M. Dentzer and J. Dentzer-Fedy, Le djebel al-Arab: histoire et patrimoine au Musée de Suweida, Paris, 1991, pl. 11, no. 317, and pl. 13, no. 247.

In 1925 the present relief stood in one of two open-air enclosures known together as the “Musée” on the outskirts of the southern Syrian city of Soweida, the capital of what was then a semi-independent Druze state under French mandate, the État du Djebel Druze (in existence from 1922 to 1930). In 1924 the French military governor of the State, Captain Carbillet, had invited the inhabitants of the city and those of all 123 surrounding Druze mountain villages to surrender every piece of sculpture, including inscriptions, architectural fragments, reliefs, and carvings in the round, which were not built into modern walls. The items were gathered into two enclosures, where Dunand recorded, photographed, and arranged them by villages. On April 5th, 1925, General Sarrail, French High Commissioner in Syria, inaugurated the “Musée de Soueïda”. Dunand then undertook a four-month expedition in the Djebel, conducting several excavations and sending additional objects, mostly inscriptions, to the Museum.

On July 20th, 1925, the Druze population rebelled against French rule, and, the next day, massacred the French garrison at Kafer, a remote village which had its own temporary depot of antiquities. After the French colonial troops had quelled the insurgency, Dunand came back to Soweida in 1927 and found out that a third of the objects had disappeared from the enclosures of the Museum (72 out of 222), presumably, according to him, having been removed by their owners. In his 1934 publication of the holdings of the new Soweida Museum, Dunand included photographs and entries for all the recorded items that had disappeared ten years previously; he decided not to use the original inventory system of the museum which, in his own words, "no longer corresponded with any reality."