ИСТИНА

The Naip tumulus is a late 4th-century BC burial in South-Eastern Thrace, near modern Tekirdağ. It was excavated in 1984-1985; the results were published by İ. Delemen. The tomb chamber held stone furniture: a kline, a footstool, two diphroi, and a table. Each of these objects is a close imitation of wooden prototypes. This followed a popular trend in the furnishing of Hellenistic tombs, alluding to the world of symposia, and funerary banquets. The table goes a step further, and “sets in stone” the layout of plates and bowls as well. This feature is nearly exceptional in the corpus of Hellenistic petrified furniture. On the one hand, I would like to examine the possible origins of this table in more detail. On the other, I aim to analyze the semantic potential of this setup. Of particular interest is the way vessels or combinations of vessels and furniture are integrated into (as in the so-called “Tomb of Alketas” in Termessos) and depicted in (as in numerous Macedonian and Thracian examples) specific zones of the tombs.