Into Turkey– Part Six

In the courtyard of the Istanbul Museum there are various things to see, including Aslan!  Yes, the Turkish word for lion is aslan, and C.S. Lewis used it in his Narnia tales.

In fact this is a Sam’al lion statue, from 10,000 B.C.  Made of dolemite, it comes from near Gaziantep.

One of the major kinds of the some 60,000 holdings this museum has is sarcophagi.  This one is interesting not only for the family scene on its side, but also the drainage hole on the same side.  We will examine several of the most famous of the sarcophagi below.

Also in the courtyard are two other small museums, one focusing on the ANE, the Orient goldings like the lion/Ishtar gate from Babylon, but there is also a ceramics museum as well…

But we will focus on several of the major sarcophagi in this post. One of the most moving of the sarcophagi is the burial box of the weeping maidens or mourning women…

A close up of the top border of this tomb reveals a lot of charioteers and horses… This may well be a tomb of a popular athlete, a charioteers that women and men had cheered for at the races..

By far the most famous of the sarcophagi is the so-called Alexander sarcophagus.  It depicts battle scenes, probably from the battle of Issus in 333 B.C. one of Alexander’s most famous victories.

Amazingly some of the original paint can still be scene on some of these figures. And the incredible detail reflects the highest level of artistic expression from the period. We need to look at some of the details more closely, but notice already that we see the famous meander pattern just above the figures of the warriors and horses.  Below is what one of the ends looks like…

The other end depicts warriors with shields, and one is dragging a wounded man off the battlefield.  The graphic realism is notable.

This scene shows chaos with horses running over people.

Here we even have a lion biting a horse…

Alexander was famous for wearing a lion skin helmet of sorts, so no surprise that we have a lion on the top of this burial box.

Here is a Phoenician anthropoid coffin…

Here is a really beautiful sarcophagus depicting a husband and wife, Demetrios and Agathoclinos.

One of the most common motifs is to pick a favorite mythological scene or at least images of mythological creatures like a griffin..

Some of the sarcophagi are overly busy, and even go for a three D effect to a degree… you can see such a difference between the artistry of the Alexander sarcophagus and this one, is just over done.

On the other hand there are those with beautiful delicate stenciling

Here is a tomb with the gates of Hades on the end of it! Bare in mind that Hades is the Underworld, the land where most all of the dead end up. It is not the same as Hell in the NT and early Christian tradition.

And here is a rarity, a metallic coffin.