Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
150
Palmyrene Sepulchral Relief
The missing part of the back of the left hand and the adjacent sleeve are filled in with plaster along the line of the major crack.
The inscription reads: "Ra' Ta, daughter of Hairan, (son of) Taibal, Alas!" This half-figure of a veiled woman wears an enriched diadem, a brooch, and three rings. She also has a string of jewelry, gold discs and pearls or stones, running from either side of her forehead, under the diadem and back down on top of the hair above the ears. Her chiton and himation are both rather rubbery in treatment, especially the ample folds of the latter. She has a thinnish face with a small mouth, giving her an almost petulant, spoiled look.
Save for the specific, individual characteristics just mentioned, this is as "standard," as conventional a Palmyrene funerary relief bust of a woman as one can encounter. Parallels abound. Tibnan with her child on her left hand, in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, has the same qualities of drapery, in the period A.D. 150-200 (Colledge, 1976, pp. 70-71, pl. 86). Her hair cascades out from under the veil like that of "'Ala, Iarḥai's daughter," in the British Museum, a likeness bearing the date A.D. 113-114 (Colledge, 1976, pp. 62, 70, pl. 64).
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
