Funerary aspects of the ancient Roman province of noricum: the medallion tomb stelae

الملخص EN

There were in Graz and other places in Austria special collections of roman funerary stelae, with different shapes, and they can be found only in the museum catalogues, so it has never undergone a comparative study, to know if this type of stelae was characteristic in the ancient roman province of Noricum or not.

this study deals with the funerary stelae which depict the deceased person inside a medallion, and the research aims to know if this was something related only to Noricum or it was a tradition in all the roman provinces in the same time.

some of those represented dead people on the medallions stelae from Austria were roman soldiers, others were ordinary people depicted while doing their profession as for instance the stela with the depiction of a writer holding a pen and a book.

and finally those medallion stelae were special for the western roman provinces, especially in Noricum and Pannonia, with different subjects of myths, and although the shape of the medallion was roman, and many of them were soldiers, Celtic elements are found in their depiction, with another Egyptian and attic element more than the roman ones.