A Roman Marble Cinerary Urn, Asia Minor, 1st Century A.D.

of rectangular form with four feet and beveled base, the front carved in relief with three bull's heads supporting a festooned garland of fruits, leaves, and flowers, a Greek funerary inscription above and below, garlands and bull's heads in shallower relief and more schematically carved on the sides and back.

estate of an English amateur archaeologist (Mullocks Wells, Great Dunmow, Essex, Auction of Fine Art & Antiques, November 21st, 2005, no. 258, illus.)

Cinerary urns of this type (also called ostothekai) were manufactured in Asia Minor, mostly in Ephesus, in the early Roman Imperial period; with their distinctive decoration they prefigure on a smaller scale the garland sarcophagi from Asia Minor (see Koch-Sichtermann, Römische Sarkophage, p. 492). For related urns see Nusin Asgari, “Die Halbfabrikate kleinasiatische Girlandensarkophage und ihre Herkunft,” Archäologischer Anzeiger, 1977, pp. 336-338, figs. 17-19; also see Sotheby's, London, July 10th-11th, 1989, no. 387.