ИСТИНА

Besides symbolic images related to death and afterlife, a number of Lycian funerary monuments (mostly sarcophagi) of the 4th century BC depict episodes of war, feasting, meetings and audiences, organized into loose “biographic cycles”. These are all usual events of a Lycian noble’s life, but at the same time it seems that adherence to an ideal narrative scheme might be just as important as the documentation of particular achievements. One of such recurring episodes, which I’d like to examine more closely, is the depiction of a man crowning another with a wreath. Parallels with Greek iconography point to an athletic context (e.g. on the northern side of the Pajawa Sarcophagus and the lid of the Merehi sarcophagus), but there are some variations belonging apparently to different domains, as, for instance, the armored warriors on the southern side of the Pajawa Sarcophagus. It seems that in Lycia this imagery was adopted as a general formula of an authority figure bestowing honors. However, the exact relation of the persons depicted, and the role of the episode in the “biography” is not immediately obvious in each case and has to be investigated separately. On the other hand, the question remains whether the motive of “transfer of authority” (between generations) on the reliefs of family tombs, such as of Hurttuweti in Myra, is related to this theme, or it reflects another aspect of Lycian ideology.