The Sarcophagus of Adelphia: Detail, God Gives Adam and Eve Their Tasks
This panel shows God assigning the tasks of farming and spinning to Adam and Eve. It is virtually identical to
the assignment of tasks
on the Pio Cristiano's "Dogmatic Sarcophagus" and
the corresponding scene
on Sarcophagus 31551 in the Vatican's Pio Cristiano Museum. Please follow the link to the latter scene for a complete discussion of this iconographic type.
The one significant difference between this panel and the corresponding scenes on other sarcophagi is the addition of a sheaf of wheat on the ground between Jesus and Adam. The same sheaf is also added to the Original Sin scene in the second register of this sarcophagus.
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Photographed at the Syracuse Archeological Museum by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.