I had to smile at this report in the Telegraph.
A garden trough used by a couple for 30 years to hold plants has been identified as a 2,000-year-old marble coffin worth more than £100,000 [about US $157,000].
The 6ft 9ins long coffin, which has a central panel carved with the Three Graces, was left behind in the back garden by the previous owners. Unaware of its history, the couple used it as a large planter and filled it with soil to grow heather, spring bulbs and bedding plants in.
The one-ton trough has now been identified as a rare ornate Roman sarcophagus from the 1st and 2nd century AD. Made from Carrara marble, it would have been commissioned for the funeral of a wealthy woman and placed in a private mausoleum in Rome.
There's more at the link.
That's wonderful news for the owners . . . but would someone please explain how a 2,000-year-old marble coffin, weighing about a ton, found its way from ancient Rome to a suburban garden in twenty-first-century England?
Peter
2 comments:
Western archeologists utterly plundered the classical world.
The Elgin Marbles are an example.
So, it's no surprise to me that a valuable antiquity is gracing a garden. I'd not be surprised if there are a half dozen more like it.
Look at of all the ancient sculpture (not just Greek but Egyptian etc.) at the British Museum, at the Met. When you think about it, it was a staggering theft.
Lots of 'stuff' has been lugged who knows where by who knows who...
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