Subterranean Stars : Astral Imagery and Eschatology in Ancient Thrace’ Funerary Art

My article focuses on some intriguing decorations from Hellenistic and Roman Thrace, which demonstrate that astral/cosmic images found a place in elite funerary art. They include the crescent moon and star carved on the wall of the burial chamber tomb at Dolno Lukovo, the head of Helios painted on the marble door of the tomb beneath the Goljama Kosmatka Tumulus, and the starry sky on the vault of the tomb in Tumulus A at Vize, Kiklareli. As I have argued recently, an astral/cosmic programme was featured in the coffered ceiling of the tomb in the Ostrusha Tumulus, where the personification of the Pleiades may have peopled a symbolic sky together with Nereids, Sirens, and characters from Greek myth. On the strength of this evidence, it seems that bringing the celestial into the underworld – and projecting the underworld into the celestial realm in turn – appealed to the warlike Thracian aristocracy, as it did to Eastern, Greek, and Roman civilisations. Several factors enhance these Thracian examples’ importance for understanding Thracian religion, art and culture, the knowledge of which is still partial and controversial. One question we may ask, for example, is whether they offer evidence of a local tradition of astral eschatology. More generally, the topic offers a special opportunity to explore cultural interactions in funerary astral art and the reception of Greek and/or Eastern art, culture, and values in a non-Greek environment.