Asarcophagus (pl.:sarcophagi orsarcophaguses) is acoffin, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The wordsarcophagus comes from theGreekσάρξsarx meaning "flesh", andφαγεῖνphagein meaning "to eat"; hencesarcophagus means "flesh-eating", from the phraselithos sarkophagos (λίθοςσαρκοφάγος), "flesh-eating stone". The word also came to refer to a particular kind oflimestone that was thought to rapidly facilitate thedecomposition of the flesh of corpses contained within it due to the chemical properties of the limestone itself.[1][2]
Sarcophagi were most often designed to remain above ground.[citation needed] The earliest stone sarcophagi were used byEgyptian pharaohs of the 3rd dynasty, which reigned from about 2686 to 2613 BC.
TheHagia Triada sarcophagus is a stone sarcophagus elaborately painted infresco; one style of later Ancient Greek sarcophagus in painted pottery is seen inKlazomenian sarcophagi, produced around the Ionian Greek city ofKlazomenai, where most examples were found, between 550 BC (Late Archaic) and 470 BC. They are made of coarse clay in shades of brown to pink. Added to the basin-like main sarcophagus is a broad, rectangular frame, often covered with a whiteslip and then painted. The hugeLycianTomb of Payava, now in theBritish Museum, is a royal tomb monument of about 360 BC designed for an open-air placing, a grand example of a common Lycian style.
Ancient Roman sarcophagi—sometimes metal or plaster as well aslimestone—were popular from about the reign ofTrajan,[3] and often elaborately carved, until the earlyChristian burial preference for interment underground, often in a limestonesepulchre, led to their falling out of favor.[2] However, there are many importantEarly Christian sarcophagi from the 3rd to 4th centuries. Most Roman examples were designed to be placed against a wall and were decorated on three sides only. Sarcophagi continued to be used in Christian Europe for important figures, especially rulers and leading church figures, and by theHigh Middle Ages often had a recumbenttomb effigy lying on the lid. More plain sarcophagi were placed in crypts. The most famous examples include theHabsburgImperial Crypt inVienna, Austria. The term tends to be less often used to describe Medieval, Renaissance, and later examples.
In theearly modern period, lack of space tended to make sarcophagi impractical in churches, but chest tombs or false sarcophagi, empty and usually bottomless cases placed over an underground burial, became popular in outside locations such as cemeteries and churchyards, especially in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, where memorials were mostly not highly decorated and the extra cost of a false sarcophagus over a headstone acted as an indication of social status.[citation needed]
In theMekong Delta in southwestern Vietnam, it is common for families to inter their members in sarcophagi near their homes, thus allowing ready access for visits as a part of the indigenous tradition ofancestor worship.[citation needed]
Nearly 140 years after British archaeologistAlexander Rea unearthed a sarcophagus from the hillocks of Pallavaram in Tamil Nadu, an identical artifact dating back by more than 2,000 years was discovered in the same locality.[4]
Sarcophagi, usually "false", made a return to the cemeteries of America during the last quarter of the 19th century, at which time, according to a New York company which built sarcophagi, "it was decidedly the most prevalent of all memorials in our cemeteries".[7] They continued to be popular into the 1950s, at which time the popularity of flat memorials (making for easier grounds maintenance) made them obsolete. Nonetheless, a 1952 catalog from the memorial industry still included eight pages of them, broken down intoGeorgian andClassical detail, aGothic andRenaissance adaptation, and aModern variant.[8] The image shows some sarcophagi from the late 19th century located inLaurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The one in the back, the Warner Monument created byAlexander Milne Calder (1879), features the spirit or soul of the deceased being released.
^WordInfo etymology. As a noun, the Greek term was further adopted to mean "coffin" and was carried over intoLatin, where it was used in the phraselapis sarcophagus, "flesh-eating stone", referring to those same properties of limestone.
Mont Allen, "Sarcophagus", inThe Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Michael Gagarin, vol. 6, p. 214–218 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
Robert Manuel Cook,Clazomenian Sarcophagi (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1981).
R. R. R. Smith,Sculptured for Eternity: Treasures of Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Art from Istanbul Archaeological Museum (Istanbul: Ertuǧ and Kocabıyık, 2001).
Paul Zanker and Björn C. Ewald,Living with Myths: The Imagery of Roman Sarcophagi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
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