THESSALONIKI - 2008

Thessaloniki, E cemetery. C. Papageorgopoulou (Zurich University) reports on analyses of the body of a woman in a sarcophagus dating to ca. 300 AD, discovered in 1962 in the E cemetery of the city. The body, of a tall woman 50−60 years old and of high status (covered by a purple-dyed, gold-ornamented silk cloth), was embalmed using a mixture of resin, myrrh, olive and aromatic substances −the earliest attestation of this practice in Greece. The body was then placed in cotton and linen wrappings and laid on a wooden palette inside the sarcophagus. Shreds of skin, hair, reddish eyebrows, arm muscle etc. are preserved in very fragile condition, in addition to the skeleton.