Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak
About
A narrow corridor led into a round, domed burial chamber near the Thracian capital of Seuthopolis, its walls wrapped in murals of a funeral procession and a couple's farewell banquet. Painted in the final decades of the 4th century BCE, the frescoes rank among the finest surviving examples of Hellenistic painting anywhere. The tomb lay sealed beneath its earthen mound through Rome's annexation of Thracia, undisturbed until soldiers digging a shelter broke into it in 1944.
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
Nearby
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