QUELQUES COROPLASTIES DE PALESTINE AUX MOTIFS DE COMBATS
QUELQUES COROPLASTIES DE PALESTINE AUX MOTIFS DE COMBATS

Author(s): Jean-Baptiste Humbert
Subject(s): Archaeology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Philadelphia/Amman; citadel; mould; votive plaque; gladiators; combatants; circus games; funerary rituals
Summary/Abstract: A fragment of a ceramic mould discovered in the Roman strata of the citadel of Amman (ancient Philadelphia) provides opportunity to present several erratic images of gladiators known from the Near East. The mould shows two gladiators, more properly secutors, in combat. Other examples, found in Gaza (a figurine of bone and a fragment of a lamp disc), represent gladiators and scenes of equestrian combats. The author makes the hypothesis that the gladiatorial combats, with which one originally celebrated the death of a soldier, produced a popular iconography, desacralized but connected with the funerary sphere.

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