Funerary Relief of Maliku
Unknown · Roman Imperial, first half of the third century AD
A bearded man reclines on a mattress, propped on a cushion, holding a cup as though at a banquet. He wears the rich Parthian costume of the Palmyrene elite: a belted tunic, trousers, a cloak fastened by a brooch and soft shoes. At the foot of the couch, on a much smaller scale, sits his wife in a turban, veil and jewellery. A cartouche carries the epitaph in Palmyrene: image of Maliku, son of Hagegu, son of Maliku, priest of the sanctuary, alas. Look at the finely combed folds of the trousers and the frontal, unblinking eyes.
Slabs like this closed the loculi, the shelf-like niches, in the tower tombs and underground hypogea of Palmyra. The banquet scene is the standard image of the blessed dead, and the smaller wife, Hadira, appears on a companion relief also in the Louvre. Carved in the first half of the third century of our era, just before the city's fall to Rome, the relief was bought by the museum in eighteen ninety.
Did You Know? The slab once sealed a burial niche in a Palmyrene tomb tower, so the feasting priest looked out over the corridor where his family came to visit him.
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