About this lot

Description

A Roman blue-green glass cinerary urn and cover, 1st-2nd century AD,

with disk shaped cover with knopped finial, 21cm high



Footnote:

The present lot is an example of the kind of cinerary urns used between the 1st and 4th centuries A.D. Ranging in size and shape, and usually fashioned of hand-blown glass, these vessels were used to contain teeth and cremated human ashes.

The preferred funerary practice until the mid-2nd century, Roman cremation involved transporting the deceased to a necropolis before burning the body upon a funeral pyre. Following the incineration of the body, the ashen remains were then collected and interned within a cinerary urn. Whilst burial became increasingly popular after the mid-2nd century, due to the spread of Christianity and the belief in the resurrection of the body, by the 4th century, it had all but replaced cremation as the favoured custom.

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