Phrygian marble stele

Phrygia, dated to 173-174 A.D.
Height: 129 cm 
Provenance: 
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 10 July 1990, lot 257; with Merrin Gallery, New York; Private collection, USA, acquired from the above in 1990
 
Carved in relief with two female busts, each portrayed with ridged coiffures curled at the tips, wearing pleated tunics with geometric decorated collars, set within an arched niche flanked by fluted columns, the pediment decorated with foliate acroteria, with two rows of symbolic accoutrements beneath including mirrors and spinning implements such as a spindle with whorl and distaff, with three lines of Greek text beneath dedicated to an unnamed deity by Ammia and her two deceased children, Antiochus and Aphion, 
 
Translation: “In the year 258, on the 3rd day of the month Dios (after the Sullanian era = 3 September 173): Antiochos and Aphion for the memory of their sweetest child Ammia(s). And for herself (the mother) while still living.”
 
For another late 2nd Century Phrygian stele showing a female with an almost identical curl-ended hairstyle and accoutrements including a similar stylised mirror see the Getty Museum, acc. no. 83.AA.204, cf. G. Koch and K. Wight, Roman Funerary Sculpture, Malibu, 1988, pp. 97-99, no. 35.
 
Published: M. Cremer, in: Studien zum antiken Kleinasien II (1992) p. 94 pl. 6,3; SEG 40, 1990, no. 1525; R. A. Tybout, Epigraphica Anatolica 20, 1992, p. 37 note 11; Tomas Lochman, Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 74, 1991, p. 19, no. 7.