“The stele of the twin babies”. Fragment of a funerary stele, cat. no NAM Γ 15452, found in Menidi, Attica. 4th c. BC. (Photographic Archive of the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum).
“The stele of the twin babies”. Fragment of a funerary stele, cat. no NAM Γ 15452, found in Menidi, Attica. 4th c. BC. (Photographic Archive of the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum).
“The stele of the twin babies”. Fragment of a funerary stele, cat. no NAM Γ 15452, found in Menidi, Attica. 4th c. BC. (Photographic Archive of the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum).
Graphical composition (collage) of the ‘stele of the twin babies’ and the stele of Philonoe (cat. no NAM Γ 3790) illustrating the proposed position of the fragment in its initial funerary monument (Photographic Archive of the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum).
“The stele of the twin babies”. Fragment of a funerary stele, cat. no NAM Γ 15452, found in Menidi, Attica. 4th c. BC. (Photographic Archive of the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum).
“The stele of the twin babies”. Fragment of a funerary stele, cat. no NAM Γ 15452, found in Menidi, Attica. 4th c. BC. (Photographic Archive of the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum).
The Unseen Museum is the well-known exhibition project of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens that brings to the fore antiquities stored in its vaults away from the visitor’s eyes.
The Unseen Museum presents for the first time the “stele of the twin babies”. It is a fragment of a funerary monument found in a torrent at Menidi, Attica and delivered to the Museum in November 2008 by a destitute. The fragment preserves in relief two bundled twin babies in the arms of a female figure and is probably part of a tombstone that would have been erected on the grave of a woman who died in childbirth. This is the only surviving funerary relief of the ancient Greek world depicting twin babies in the same arms, which indicates their common fate as orphans.
The “stele of the twin babies” is presented in the “Altar Hall” (no. 34) from Thursday, March 21 to Monday, May 13, 2024.
