Sarcophagus - History

History

Sarcophagi were most often designed to remain above ground, hence were often ornately carved, decorated or elaborately constructed. Some were built to be freestanding, as a part of an elaborate sealed tomb or series of tombs, while others were intended for placement in crypts and remain accesible to view.

In Ancient Egypt, a sarcophagus formed the external layer of protection for a royal mummy, with several layers of coffins nested within, and was often carved out of alabaster. All were usually decorated with painted or carved representations of the deceased.

The Hagia Triada sarcophagus is a stone sarcophagus elaborately painted in fresco; one style of later Ancient Greek sarcophagus in painted pottery is seen in Klazomenian sarcophagi, produced around the Ionian Greek city of Klazomenai, where most examples were found, between 550 BC (Late Archaic) and 470 BC. They are made of coarse clay in shades of brown to pink. Added to the basin-like main sarcophagis is a rectangular broad frame, often covered with a white slip and then painted. The huge Lycian Tomb of Payava, now in the British Museum, is a royal tomb monument of about 360 BC designed for an open-air placing, a grand example of a common Lycian style.

The Etruscans placed sarcophagi in groups in their elaborate underground tombs, often with portraits in stone or pottery of the deceased lying propped up on one elbow ion the lid, as if dining. The most famous is the Sarcophagus of the Spouses (6th century BC), now in the Louvre, which is unusual in showing a couple reclining together.

Ancient Roman sarcophagi – sometimes metal or plaster as well as limestone – were popular from about the reign of Trajan, and often elaborately carved, until the early Christian burial preference for interment underground, often in a limestone sepulchre, led to their falling out of favor. However there are many important Early Christian sarcophagi from the 3rd to 4th centuries. Most Roman examples were designed to be placed against a wall and are decorated on three of the sides only. Sarcophagi continued to be used in Christian Europe for important figures, especially rulers and leading church figures, and by the High Middle Ages often had a recumbent tomb effigy lying on the lid. More plain sarcophagi were placed in crypts, of which the most famous examples include the Habsburg Imperial Crypt in Vienna. The term tends to be less often used to describe medieval, Renaissance and later examples.

In the early modern period lack of space tended to make sarcophagi impractical in churches, but false sarcophagi, empty and usually bottomless cases placed over an underground burial, became popular in outside locations such as cemeteries and churchyards, especially in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, where memorials were mostly not highly decorated and the extra cost of a false sarcophagus over a headstone acted as an indication of social status.