Broken Pediment Tomb
About
Nabataean masons split this tomb's pediment deliberately, leaving its centre cut away so the two triangular halves stand apart, a style borrowed from Ptolemaic Alexandria. Behind the nearly square facade a chamber roughly eight and a half by ten metres holds a two-storey colonnade of engaged pilasters lining one wall. Three burial niches were cut into the back of that colonnade for the family interred there. Carved in the first century CE, it had already served as a tomb for decades by the time Trajan died.
What happened here
Roman burial is a family matter conducted in public. The dead are carried out of town, cremated or laid in the ground, and mourned with formal noise; the funeral of anyone important is a procession with masks of the ancestors carried by hired men. The tomb that follows is designed to be read by strangers on the road: name, age, offices, sometimes a trade shown in relief, often a line addressed directly to the passer-by. Ordinary people appear here as they nowhere else — a baker with his ovens carved on the front, a freedman naming the woman he could finally marry, a child's age given in days. Anniversaries bring the family back with food and wine.
Sources
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