AJA

A striking find emerged from a tumulus in the eastern necropolis of Daskyleion in northwestern Anatolia: a white-ground cup depicting Hermes Psychopompos leading a deceased woman to the underworld. This article focuses on the painter or workshop associated with the cup and questions how it ended up in the multicultural context of a noble grave in a Persian satrapal center.

This article offers an analysis of the Feminine Sacrificial Attendant figure type on the Column of Trajan frieze in Rome. We first present a detailed study of the Column of Trajan examples, focusing on both composition and broader narrative context. We argue, based on this methodology, that the traditional identification of these figures as masculine must be abandoned, in favor of a more demonstrable identification as feminine.

In his final report of the excavations at Dura-Europos, Syria, the scholar Carl Kraeling established the site’s Christian Building as the ancient world’s preeminent example of a domus ecclesiae, a house converted into a church through architectural adaptation. In Kraeling’s interpretation, a private domestic structure (House M8A) built in 232 CE was later remade as a community-owned church through a single, deliberate program of modification.

An artificial terrace in the center of the city of Sardis in western Asia Minor formed a focus of urban life from the Early Imperial period until the early Byzantine era. Following the earthquake of 17 CE, the terrace became a major sanctuary of the imperial cult belonging to the koinon of Asia. The lavishly ornamented octastyle temple and broad range of honorific monuments attest the importance of the sanctuary for the first three centuries CE.

This archaeological note reports on an architectural block from the peak sanctuary at Stelida on Naxos that is inscribed with a mason’s mark, the first such example from the island and one of only a handful outside of Crete and Akrotiri on Thera.

Among the more than 2,000 ancient engravings on marble outcrops in hills north and east of Vari, Attica, there appears a remarkable drawing of a building. The structure, which seems to be a temple, is identified by its inscription as “the Hekatompedon” and was produced by an individual named Mikon. This note presents the drawing and the inscription.

Nuova luce da Pompei (New Light from Pompeii) explored the role of artificial light in the lives of ancient Romans. In addition to presenting 180 rarely seen bronzes from Pompeii, including lamps, candelabra, and elegant statues that held lamps, the exhibition demonstrated the effects and meanings these lighting devices generated.