#tower tomb

[archaeologyinbulgaria]

Funding Cut Mars Research of Middle Eastern Tower Tomb Found under Thracian Mound near Bulgaria’s Plovdiv

Funding Cut Mars Research of Middle Eastern Tower Tomb Found under Thracian Mound near Bulgaria’s Plovdiv

Hidden underneath what was supposedly the largest Ancient Thracian burial mound in Bulgaria has turned out to be a pyramid-shaped Roman Era Middle Eastern tower tombs like the ones in Petra and Palmyra. The photo shows only the top of the 3rd century AD building. Photo: Plovdiv Time

The Middle Eastern style tower tomb from the 3rd century AD discovered unexpectedly underneath the Maltepe Burial…

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[classicalmonuments]

Tower Tomb

Bostra (Bosra), Arabia, Syria

132 CE

On all sides of the city, and even inside the walls, are inscriptions from tombs that must have had some architectural features. In one of them a citizen refers to the tomb which he has erected as “perfection’s fairest flower”. The sarcophagus discovered not far from the reservoir in the southeast quarter of the tower, must have belonged to a tomb of considerable importance as a monument.

The tomb is a low circular tower (Ill. 244) with a very perfectly made little dome of cut stone, the crown of which barely reaches above the cornice which crowns the cylinder that encloses it. The tower rested upon a square foundation only one course high. It had a deep and well drawn base-moulding and a simple but elegant overhanging cornice. Inside, a simple cyma (c) marked the springing of the dome, the crowning stone of which was circular with a narrow moulding about it. The profile of the cornice is interesting, though the soffit of the corona was not undercut. My drawings show this detail and the base moulding below as if straight instead of curved in order to emphasize the profiles. 

A native of the village of Bosra showed me in his house Ill. 245. a piece of sculpture which he said he had brought from this tower-tomb. It was a water-spout consisting of a lion’s head with enough of the mouldings preserved on either side of it to prove that it had belonged to this cornice. The head is not well drawn, having lines more suggestive of a wolf than a lion; but in execution and style it is not without interest owing to its likeness to lions’ heads found among the ruins at Sic, especially to those found at the angles of an altar-pedestal dated early in the first century.

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