The Adelphia Sarcophagus:
Detail, scene 2 on the lid

The scene to the left of this one has a woman drawing water from a well; the one to the right has a veiled woman on a throne. The woman in the center of the present scene has the same hair style and the same simple belted tunic as in the scene at the well. The women with her are also bare-headed. They have slightly longer coifs, but the same simple tunics and belts. They look to her, but she looks to the enthroned woman in the next scene. Indeed, it is not certain that this scene should be taken as separate from the next: we may be looking at a single composition in which the woman in the tunic has been conducted into a single space dominated by the woman on the throne.

For scholars who interpret the first scene as the Annunciation, this second one shows Mary being conducted to her throne in Heaven. Others believe the first scene is Adelphia taking from the well of wisdom in her lifetime, so that now in death she is being conducted into the presence of Wisdom itself, personified by the woman on the throne.

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Photographed at the Syracuse Archeological Museum by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.