art, funerary, Greek
art, funerary, GreekThis article covers both architecture and art made specifically to mark and monumentalize the grave; for grave goods (which may be of any sort, and in Greece were rarely, it seems, custom-made for the tomb): see dead, disposal of.
Bronze age
(c.3000–c.1100 BC). The earliest monumental funerary architecture occurs in the Mesara plain of Crete, where hundreds of circular stone tholos-tombs were erected during the third millennium, each housing multiple burials. Late Minoan rulers were occasionally buried in sumptuous built tombs, like the Royal Tomb at Isopata and the Egyptian-style Temple Tomb at Cnossus (see Minoan civilization). On the mainland, the 16th-cent. shafts of Grave Circle A at Mycenae were surmounted by limestone slabs showing battles and hunts from chariots, and from c.1400 the élite were buried in corbelled tholos-tombs, of which...[The entire page is 1340 words long]
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