The Lion Sarcophagus
Termessos, Pisidia, Asia Minor (Turkey)
1st/ 2nd century CE
The lion monument is a funerary monument shaped as a Corinthian prostyle temple with three columns (tristyle). The walls and columns rise up on a base of four steps, forming a room of about 3 m. width and depth, within which an ornate sarcophagus is stationed. The unfluted columns were 3.66 m. tall, including base and capital, and 1.73 m apart, measured from center to center, their location is indicated by mortises in the stone slabs.
The entablature consists of a high architrave with an attached frieze and dentils cornices with masks. The decorations on the entablature differ significantly from what has been brought up in the drawing. On the frieze, the acanthus is not used but the bay leaf, and in the architrave crowned fillet continuous there are continuous tendrils instead of the usual palmettes.
The sarcophagus is still in its original place and is badly weathered, but uninjured except for a hole in the middle of the front long side; this front shows two Beasts, it seems, lions and panthers, holding an amphora; above it a frieze with sea monsters divided into several fields; Tendril ornaments fill the narrow fields at the side, while a laurel thread is attached at the bottom. There is a second, very simple sarcophagus next to the monument on the third mare of the substructure, forming a wide heel; a place that probably indicates that a relative or Servant of the honored by the burial temple rested. The one on the large sarcophagus The attached inscription turned out to be illegible.
