Reliefs in some of the pagan tombs included images of gods and mythic figures, which were apparently meant to remind visitors of the deceased. Nymphs could suggest young women. Heroes like Hercules, here shown slaying his enemy, Acheloos, who was disguised as a bull, would have suggested powerful or authoritative men. As on most of these reliefs, all the empty spaces are filled with intertwining plants.

The halo around the head of this bearded man identifies him as a saint. His arms were both bent upward, and in one hand, now lost, he held a cross. With his other hand, he appears to be blessing his viewers. The deeper carving of the figure’s face and of his cross emphasizes their importance in this composition, which was probably made for a church rather than a tomb.

A figure of the deceased was often placed in front of the tomb, or inside it. This life-sized image of a woman was once a full-length figure carved almost in the round against a back slab. She wears the draped garments and jewelry then in fashion throughout the Greco-Roman world. The small vessel for Nile water in her left hand shows that she was a priestess of Isis.

This stela, by far the oldest in this exhibition, was made for the tomb of a three-year-old boy, whose father was a Roman soldier stationed in Egypt. Thus the child wears a Roman-style garments and stands beside a griffin, which represents the Roman goddess Fortuna. From his Egyptian mother, he inherited the sidelock of hair, traditionally worn by Egyptian children, and the Egyptian gods shown on either side: the jackal god Anubis and Horus, a crowned falcon.