A New Epigram in the Uşak Museum: The Relief Stele of Maximus

Abstract

This article introduces an unpublished tombstone with an epigram, on display at the Uşak Archaeology Museum. A funerary epigram of nines lines forms three lined accurate distiches. The mentioned tombstone is for a young child who was taken by Hades. His tombstone is large with artistic reliefs on it such as lion and bull motif in the gable; rabbit chasing scene, a garland, diptychon, ink-well set and papyrus roll on the body. The stele whose findspot remains unknown, is dated to the 27th of Deios of the year 198. Since the findspot is unknown and the Uşak Archaeological Museum is one of the meeting points of archaeological finds from the Lydian-Phrygian borderland the stele has to be taken somewhere close, which leads the era either Sullan or Aktian. Due to the scene of a hound chasing a rabbit mostly found in Phrygia, the lion and bull motif in the gable and the U-shaped omega, this stele is to be dated according to the Aktian era rather than the Sullan Era. As a result, we can say that the provenance of the stele must have been somewhere close to the Phrygian border. As for the reliefs on the body part, they point out that the deceased Maximus was at the age of a schoolboy when he died.