The Embodiment of the Plot “After Death Meal” in the Ancient Funerary Monuments of the Northern Black Sea Region

Abstract

In the first centuries of our era, the Greek cities of the Northern Black Sea region experienced crisis processes. They resulted in significant changes in the life of policies, including the burial rite. The significance of individual plots used in its performance changes. The plot of the “afterlife meal” and certain types of funerary objects, in which it was embodied, are widely spread. Two types of such objects have been identified and analyzed: stone tombstones with corresponding images and underground crypts with niches – beds in the chambers. Earlier, the corresponding stone tombstones appear in small quantities in Olbia in the Hellenistic period. Since the beginning of the new era, they are widely spread throughout the Northern Black Sea region. On the tombstones the interior of the house and the deceased, reclining on the boxes during the “afterlife meal”, is often depicted. The same interior is embodied in the internal structure of the underground crypts chambers. In this niche – beds symbolize the burial bed. Such crypts appear in insignificant quantities in Hellenistic Olbia, but they are also widely spread from the 1st c. AD throughout the Northern Black Sea. Thus, the plot of the “afterlife meal”, widely known in the ancient world, on the territory of the Northern Black Sea region is embodied in at least two categories of archaeological monuments – stone tombstones with corresponding images and underground crypts with niches – stove beds. Such monuments appear in small numbers in Hellenism, and since the beginning of the Roman era they have become widespread. This is partly due to the intensification of the process of “heroization” of the dead and changes in the social structure of the population of this region.