462 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 195 7 



block were found to be insufficient. These were, however, minor var- 

 iants within what was in practice a remarkably stereotyped design. 

 And the fact that this design is found identically on the unworked 

 faces of sarcophagi as widely scattered as in Asia Minor, in Syria, and 

 in Egypt, leaves no room for doubt that it was carved before shipment. 



It was only on arrival at its destination that the sarcophagus was 

 worked up into its final form. That, too, is proved beyond question, 

 not only by the consistent differences that distinguished, for example, 

 a sarcophagus found in Syria from one found in Egypt or Asia Minor, 

 but also by the fact that the sculptor of the finished piece has very 

 often been able to take into account the location of the sarcophagus 

 within the tomb for which it was destined, and so to concentrate his 

 attention upon those sides that would be most conspicuously visible 

 after installation. One or more sides might be left rough, just as re- 

 ceived from the quarry, and in certain extreme cases this is the only 

 surviving indication that a particular sarcophagus belonged to the 

 series in question. Such, for example, are a pair of fine sarcophagi 

 from Tripoli, in Syria, now in the museum at Istanbul (8), the one 

 showing on the front a woman reclining on a couch and attended by 

 a slave girl, the other a figured scene from the story of Hippolytus and 

 Phaedra, which is clearly inspired by the representations of the same 

 scene on contemporary Attic sarcophagi. The marble of both, how- 

 ever, is Proconnesian and the telltale garland design can still be seen 

 roughed out, in the one case on the two ends, in the other on the back. 

 They were found moreover, with a garland sarcophagus of unusual 

 elaboration but otherwise conventional design (pi. 4, fig. 2) (9), and 

 there can be no doubt that all three were shipped from Proconnesus 

 as potential garland sarcophagi, roughed out in the usual manner. 



The three sarcophagi from Tripoli are exceptional, a shipment that 

 found its way to a local workshop of unusually cosmopolitan tastes and 

 competence. Normally the importing workshops seem to have been 

 content to work within the limits imposed by the parent design. The 

 garlands are supported by Victories or Cupids standing on bases or 

 brackets, or by rams' or bulls' heads; the circular bosses above the 

 garlands are worked up into human heads, or rosettes, or small birds ; 

 the garlands themselves are variously carved, with or without pendent 

 bunches of grapes. By cutting a little deeper into the marble the 

 sculptor could introduce secondary motifs in low relief, such as the 

 ribbons which figure on many of the sarcophagi, trailing into the field 

 above and below the garlands. Alternatively, he might simplify the 

 design by leaving parts of it substantially uncarved, one of the com- 

 monest of such simplifications being to treat the garlands as the plain, 

 bolsterlike loops that figure on the Bryn Mawr sarcophagus. He 

 might even be content merely to work over the original quarry design, 



