Synopsis
The series of tomb paintings of Marisa, barely 60 kilometres southwest of Jerusalem, represents one of the first major discoveries of paintings dating from the Hellenistic period proper. They produced much excitement among art scholars and antiquarians at the time of their discovery, almost exactly a century ago. John Peters and Hermann Thiersch rendered a considerable service to later generations by having these paintings photographed almost immediately, because they very rapidly deteriorated and within a few years virtually disappeared. At that time, only black and white photography was possible and it was therefore decided to produce coloured lithographic copies of the photographs in the monograph, Painted Tombs in the Necropolis of Marisa, which was published by the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1905. Unfortunately, the fine detail discernible in the original plates was obscured and the reliability of this published record was diminished by the restorative additions made to at least some of the published photographs.
In this book, prints made from the original glass-plate negatives are published for the first time, alongside proof copies of the colour prints in the Palestine Exploration Fund collections (copies which are of superior quality to the illustrations in their published state). The author also reviews the literature relating to the subject matter of the Marisa paintings, giving particular attention to the remarkable animal frieze in Tomb I. This timely publication makes the fine but long-neglected paintings from Marisa available to art historians once more. There can be little doubt that they provide a fascinating glimpse of the impact of Hellenistic culture, in particular that of Ptolemaic Alexandria, on the inhabitants of an outlying provincial town, both in life and in death.
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