Exploring Greece, Israel and Jordan— Part Twenty Seven

While exploring Thessalonike looking for Biblical data leaves one wanting more, there are plenty of things in the archaeological museum there that are worth highlighting for instance the grave steles. For example, here is a stele honoring an actor Marcus Valerius, who apparently convincingly played both male and female roles in tragedies….. Or here is a fisherman’s grave stele, Here’s an interesting one involving a slave with a scroll. Many of these inscriptions are not merely honorific but address onlookers and sometimes warn them about what is yet to come….

Here is another interesting stele, which has a rarity, a scribe taking dictation. The deceased is depicted lying on a couch (in other examples they are sitting in a chair).

Here are grave steles of ancient sports heroes, namely gladiators…

Sometimes, mausoleums would honor several deceased members of the family….

But it was not just the dead who were honored in an honorific way—-sometimes the gods were honored for sparing the living, as in this honorific column….

Archaeologists literally struck gold when they found the burial grounds of the ancient city of Kassandreia….

In the burial area of a young woman, all sorts of gold objects were found, presumably meaning she was an ancient queen, because a crown was involved… It appears she died in childbirth, a very common ancient occurrence.

But clearly, the most spectacular find from this burial ground is the Dervent krater, or giant gold vase…